Prior to both meets this past weekend, Iowa State won four of their last five competitions. The team was ready to do better than the last and continue their win streak.

Then, the unexpected happened. One of Iowa State’s best gymnasts uncharacteristically and brutally fell mid-routine on the bars. Unfortunately, for the Cyclones, it didn’t stop there. Repetitive mistakes from multiple strong performers started to take its toll.

There were hardly any answers to explain what happened when star athletes Haylee Young, Kelsey Paz, and Hilary Green had trouble with their uneven bars, because it seems to never happen.

“[They] promised me that it wasn’t going to happen again,” said coach Jay Ronayne. “I really am not worried, like Kelsey’s missed skill was a rarity for her. When it happened even she was shocked, she said, ‘I don’t even know what happened.’”

Confident that the one time mistakes won’t be an issue moving forward, it was unfortunate that the it had to cost the Cyclones two wins. Although, the team’s overall performance could be at fault as well, for they didn’t show their true potential.

“We could have done a lot better,” said Kelsey Paz. “We had really high peaks from girls… but we can all do even better than that.”

Possible fatigue was at question when it came to Sunday as the scores all around weren’t as high as Iowa State is used to.

“Fatigue could have been a little factor, but I don’t think any of [the women] want to claim that. We all know that we have to perform when we have to perform,” Ronayne said. “I’m not going to lean on a crutch that says we were tired because we had a job to do, we just didn’t get it done on bars leaving an entire point.”

All around the gymnastics line-up were stellar performances as well as poor performances. All of them had an effect on the final outcome of the weekend, as the couple mistakes on bars didn’t have to be as detrimental to the scoreboard as it was.

“We had some high moments and some low moments, but we are going to try and focus on the positives and get going for the next few weeks,” said Sievers.

It’s the team’s goal to end the losing streak of two games as soon as this Friday in Champaign, IL. Even more important so to get a win when they come back to Hilton Coliseum for the Iowa Corn Cy-Hawk series in two weeks.

“I know we are ready to be back for vengeance in two weeks to kind of redeem ourselves here,” said Sievers.

Looking ahead, there are always improvements to be made. More specifically, Iowa State’s biggest target is consistency.

“We just really need to work on consistency,” said Sievers. “We have the skills we have the routines and we just need to put it all together at the same time.”