For the first time since 1988, the Michigan State Spartans are headed to the national championships as a team. During Saturday night’s meet against LSU, Kentucky, and Arkansas, Michigan State scored its second-highest score of the year hitting 198.00, just a half of a tenth behind the reigning national champions.
“[We came into this meet] just really relaxed and confident,” said head coach Mike Rowe who is in his eighth season for the Spartans. “We did a lot of psych work after last season. We had the talent, we had the consistency, but something just went wrong last year at the final.” After narrowly missing nationals in 2024, getting to Texas has been the ultimate goal for this team.
Rowe shared the approach he has taken with his team of working on themselves internally as a team, emphasizing positivity and focusing simply on how they compete rather than what’s preceding it. “A lot of the time the team will worry about how they warm up, but we aren’t trying to win the warmup,” said Rowe. “They might think that ‘a bad warmup means a bad competition,’ but I tell them this is the time to make adjustments and figure it out for the competition.”
At the Pennsylvania final, MSU started its competition on floor with a strong event total…
