Friday was a night of bests for the ISU gymnastics team (2-4, 1-1 Big 12) as it set season-high marks in both attendance and overall points en route to its first conference win of the season against West Virginia.

The ISU victory was highlighted by a breakout performance from senior Camille Santerre-Gervais, who tied a school record on bars, posting a 9.950.

ISU coach Jay Ronayne wasn’t surprised by Santerre-Gervais’ record-tying performance. In fact, he said has been expecting it.

“I’ve been seeing it coming for years, actually,” Ronayne said. “Every day in the gym she will do a routine just like that, or maybe even better, so we’ve been talking about it for a long, long time.”

Santerre-Gervais said there was something different about her mindset Friday night, and talked about the role it played in her most successful meet of the season.

“One of my old teammates scored a 9.950, and she said she felt really good from the start,” Santerre-Gervais said. “I don’t know why, but I had the same feeling. It went through my mind and I [thought], ‘this is it.'”

Santerre-Gervais said that during the routine she was aware of how well she was performing, but did her best to keep those thoughts at bay.

“It absolutely occurs to you, but you keep going,” Santerre-Gervais said. “You want to be in the moment, and stay in the moment.”

Junior Caitlin Brown explained why the celebration around Santerre-Gervais’ bar routine was even more charged than normal.

“Even before the score came up, we knew that was a good routine,” Brown said. “That was a routine we’ve been waiting for Cam to do all year. To see her do it in a meet and get rewarded for it like that, it was really special.”

Brown said that along with Santerre-Gervais’ performance, the season high attendance of 1,797 provided extra motivation that helped carry the Cyclones to their best scoring output of the season, 196.025.

“It plays a role,” Brown said. “This was the first time that we’ve competed at Hilton while [school was in session], so to have our students here was comforting. Our real fan base, they are the best in the world, we feed off of it.”

Ronayne credited the team’s success to having two weeks off between meets and the extra motivation that is inherent to a conference matchup.

“We were able to get a nice balance between getting some repetition in, which builds confidence, but also some rest,” Ronayne said. “We were also pretty focused because we really wanted to [beat West Virginia]. It wasn’t like we just wanted to come out and get a good score.”

The Cyclones will try and capitalize on the momentum from Friday night as they head to Dekalb, Ill., Feb. 16 for a tri-meet with Northern Illinois and Texas Women’s University.