One of my favorite all-time coaches here at the University of Michigan.

Bev Placki is going to join us in just a moment to talk about an exhibition this weekend,

the season officially getting underway in the month of January, but a lot of expectations on a team

that has now won 27 Big Ten championships coming off their last one.

Most recently last year, we'll talk to head coach Beth Balakie in just a moment on conquering heroes.

Welcome to your one-stop podcast for all things, Michigan Athletics.

Updates on every team on campus and interviews with players and coaches are all on the way.

This is Conquering Heroes.

Here's your host, John Jansen.

Join now by the head coach here at Michigan for the women's gymnastics program, Bev Pallaki.

And coach, you're coming off of a season where you

guys won a Big Ten championship, 27th in program history. It's a record. And I'm curious,

what's the preparation been like leading up to this season? Well, it's always great to talk to you,

John, and I'll start out with that. But, yes, we felt that we had a great season last year.

Obviously, did not end the way that we wanted it to.

And unfortunately, that was the second year in a row that we didn't have the ending quite that we wanted to with the finish,

but it made us hungry over the summer, worked very hard, and looking very much forward to the

start of this year, a very different year for us this year. We've got some holes to fill. We graduated

some really strong athlete in Natalie Vojcheck, obviously, Abby High School,

Nicoleta Koulos. Those were really important key people in our lineups. And so there's been

a lot of competitive development going on in the gym. And we're going to see who's going to step up

and and step into some of those lineup spots so you this weekend on sunday um you've got an

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