UW Oshkosh (4-6) defeated UW-Eau Claire (3-6) 191.675-184.275 last Friday. 

A major component of the win for the Titans was Emily Buffington, who earned 38.725 cumulative points throughout the night, setting a team record. She said that this was a culmination of her work this year.

“I’ve been working hard all around all year so it was cool to go out there and get a record,” she said. “I was just happy to go out there and help the team any way that I could.”

Buffington competed in all four events, averaging a score of 9.681 for her events, a score that no Blugold’s was able to match.

The night was successful due to strong individual performances. The lowest average UWO score, which was in the bars, was a score of 9.317.

Buffington said that this win came from the Titans’ willingness to try difficult maneuvers.

“I think we have a bit more depth of difficulty and hitting our routines cleanly was a big help for us,” she said.

Coach Lauren Karnitz said that this performance comes in part from the team falling into their places and getting confident with their positions.

“People are getting healthy. They’re hitting their strides and getting confident with their skills,” she said. “You can see that play out in these last meets for us because we changed the way we brought energy into the gym on a daily basis that has turned over to the competition gym.”

The team is consistently improving, with scores increasing meet after meet and getting ready to face off against the final opponent, UW-Whitewater (4-4). Buffington said that with this energy, they’re ready to move past dual meets and get to conference.

“All of us feel confident, our practices are going really well and our energy is up,” she said. “We keep getting better and better each weekend and we’re looking forward to getting this out of the way and going to the conference.”

Karnitz said that consistency will be an asset for the team when closing out the season.

“It’s hard to know what’s going to happen meet to meet because you get different judges and different judges see different things,” she said. “Floor and vault have been our strengths. But we’re upping our consistency on bars, and that has been showing the last few meets.”

Karnitz said that she’s looking forward to the championships, but their placement isn’t all that counts.

“Someone has to win, why not us? But that’s not our focus,” she said. “We have to be the best version of ourselves and it has to be exactly how we practice our routines.”

The Titans will take on UW-Whitewater on March 4 at 4 p.m.