When it comes to women’s gymnastics, Nadalie Walsh sees how her conference is looked at. The University of Illinois head coach believes that the Big Ten gets the short end of the stick when it comes to national attention and notoriety.

That is why Walsh is looking forward to this week’s Big Five Meet in Toledo, Ohio. The second-year coach sees the meet as an opportunity to put the Big Ten on the map this season.

“I think it just really showcases the Big Ten, and that's what we want to do,” Walsh said. “We want the Big Ten to be looked at as one of the most premier conferences in the country, and we're all really excited about making this change to really highlight our conference.”

Not to be confused with the Big Ten Conference meet that takes place at the end of the season, the Big Five Meet takes place over two days on Feb. 22 and 23.

The five teams that will compete Friday’s session include Iowa, Maryland, Michigan State, Nebraska and Penn State. Saturday’s session will be made up of Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio State and Rutgers. Both days of competition will take place at the Huntington Center and will be televised live on FloGymnastics.com.

“I think that this is going to be an incredible meet and the idea that both halves of the Big Ten are going to be at this meet on a Friday night and a Saturday night, I think it will showcase the Big Ten and the amount of talent that we have top to bottom,” Michigan coach Bev Plocki said. “I think a lot of times the Big Ten gets overlooked when people are watching so much. Unfortunately, we don’t have as much coverage on the Big Ten network as the SEC and Pac-12 are getting on their conference network. So this is really an opportunity for people to tune in and see the Big Ten at the Big Five meet, but also at the Big Ten Championships. Because there are a lot of really talented athletes and great teams in the Big Ten Conference.”

The Big Five made its first appearance in 2014. No other conference has adopted the system.

“I think that it is something unique to the Big Ten,” Rutgers coach Umme Salim-Beasley said. “None of the other Power Five conferences do semifinal ways to seed their teams into the conference championships. That is really exciting. I do love that the Big Ten does something so unique as the Big Five. I think at some point in time you will start to see other conferences do something similar.”

Heading into the meet, Michigan would have to be classified as the favorite. The Wolverines are the only conference team currently ranked in the top 10 in the nation in terms of scoring average. The Wolverines sit in eighth place with an average score of 196.482.

However, Plocki wants her unit to lock in on the Wolverines.

“We just have to keep focusing on ourselves,” Plocki said. “We have to keep fine tuning and improving within our own team. If we take care of ourselves, the competition will take care of itself. We don’t have offensive and defensive strategies in gymnastics. If we allow ourselves to focus on other teams, then we’re distracted from our own performances. Our goal is to just keep plugging along like the little engine that could, focus on ourselves, focus on improving and fine tuning all the little things so we can be the best possible team we can be when we get to the postseason.”

The Big Five Meet is also part of the annual Elevate the Stage event.  Because of that, the meet takes place on the podiums, which is what NCAA teams will see in the postseason.

For Walsh, this will be her team’s first time on podiums this season.

“When you have a podium, the balance is a little bit different ... It actually makes the gymnastics a little easier in the sense that you can't go too hard or you could bounce out of bounds or maybe overshoot your hurdle for vaulting,” Walsh said. “So we've just got to make sure we're really relaxed and we're training and not trying hard. Just letting the gymnastics do what it does, because we have enough numbers and repetitions in.”

For Plocki and the Wolverines, it’s also good practice for where they want to be at the end of the season.

“We love competing on the podium. My athletes that have done it look forward to it very much. It’s a more forgiving surface on their bodies,” Plocki said. “They really like that about it. It definitely highlights the athlete, which I also like about it. Since our nationals are on podium, it’s a great experience for us to be able to have as a team to help prepare us for that.”

Because it is such a rare experience for teams to get to compete on the podium, coaches want their squad to enjoying the moment.

“The girls need to just enjoy the stage that they're on and look at it as a platform, an opportunity to show off what they can do rather than a spotlight to make them nervous,” Walsh said. “It's a good platform for them to just show tons of young audience, young girls in the audience that they can look up to those athletes and they can go out there and they can follow their dreams, too.”