No. 12 Auburn gymnastics defeated Air Force Academy 196.625 to190.900 in the Tigers' final non-conference dual meet before SEC competitions on Friday, Jan. 30, in Auburn Arena.
Coming off a record meet against Arkansas, Auburn (3-1, 2-1 SEC) continued its strong performances in front of 5,881 fans on Military Appreciation Night.
"We went 24-for-24, which was important to us," said head coach Jeff Graba. "We tried to build in every event and I felt like we did a good job with that."
Caitlin Atkinson won her third straight all-around title with a total score of 39.400 in the Tigers' victory. The junior scored 9.825 on vault, 9.850 on bars, 9.825 on beam and 9.900 on floor.
Auburn went into Friday's meet focused on building on each event, according to Graba.
"Each event is an entity in itself," Graba said. "We are trying to start out strong and then build on that. It was nice to see that everyone settled down and got into a flow tonight."
Redshirt junior Lexus Demers opened up the meet with a career-high 9.925 on vault and Auburn stayed consistent from there.
"I actually worked really hard this week in vault and I overdid my numbers every day in practice." Demers said. "My goal was to that exact vault so I'm really pleased."
Megan Walker claimed her third event title of the year in bars to stick the Tigers with their second highest score (49.175) on the event this season.
The Tigers handled their nerves on the beam as they recorded another second-highest score (49.075) of the season and went 6-for-6 in the event for the first time this season.
Auburn will turn their attention to No.6 Alabama this week to get ready for the road match in Tuscaloosa next Friday, Feb. 6.
"It won't be hard to motivate the girls this week," Graba said. "They are really dialed in. The danger was that we would look past this week at Alabama. I think we proved we weren't doing that and we got to get a lot sharper in order to go against them and to compete in their arena with their crowd."
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