One hundred sixty eight letters. Nine exclamation points. Two apostrophes. Put it all together and it is the exact amount of letters and punctuation marks needed to spell out "The Victors", the iconic University of Michigan fight song.

It’s the song the Michigan women’s gymnastics team sang after it won a regional championship two weeks ago, and the song it hopes to sing from atop a podium on Sunday at the conclusion of 2013 NCAA championships, which take place Friday-Sunday in Los Angeles, Calif.

Longtime head coach Bev Plocki knows her team can sing the song, but in order to do so one last time this year, Plocki asked them to spell it.

Plocki asked members of the team what they needed to do to have any shot at winning a national championship, and they agreed sticking landings would be the key. So every time someone stuck a landing in the six practices leading up to leaving for the national championships, they grabbed a paper cutout of a letter, or an exclamation point, or an apostrophe. and taped it on the glass window of the team’s training center.

"We feel like if we can do what we’ve done the past two weeks at the competition, that’s what we’ll be singing a the top of the podium at the end of the meet," Plocki said.

“We said, what’s going to make the difference? Who’s going to win the national championship and what’s going to make the difference in who wins and they said sticking landings,” Plocki said. “Every time they stuck a dismount at the end of a routine, or a vault or did a floor routine that didn’t have landing deductions, they could put a name on letter and put the letter up.”

The team laughed and took silly pictures with the seniors and Plocki at the end of their last home practice of the season on Tuesday. When red-shirt junior Natalie Beilstein stuck a dismount off of the balance beam, she didn’t rush over to the window to pin up a letter.

By then, the window was full.

“What that says to me is they were very committed and focused to what they were doing and paying attention and fighting for every landing and that’s what we’re going to have to do to win a national championship,” Plocki said.

Big Ten gymnast of the year Joanna Sampson didn’t see the 179 sticks in less than six practices as inordinately high. She said the exercise served as a reminder that the team is capable of doing what it takes to win it all.

“It really just made it kind of concrete so we could actually see,” Sampson said. “It was a good goal for us to have. We don’t need to try to be better than who we are, we just need to be ourselves and do the best gymnastics that we know how to do.”

After stating how important sticking landings will be and then having every stuck landing put in the spotlight, senior Katie Zurales said the team is confident heading into the weekend.

“When you can get a letter and contribute to the team, that is motivation,” Zurales said. “And then seeing how many we have accomplished throughout the past two weeks…it just gives us that much more confidence going in this weekend to know that we can stick all those landings.”

Plocki believes her team still hasn’t performed up to its full potential this season, which she said is encouraging because there is a constant strive for improvement. Plocki has seen a lot in her 24 years at the helm of the team and is no stranger to a team peaking too early.

“There have been times where I felt like in the beginning of March we were hitting on all cylinders and everything and you get that feeling where you just can’t do anything wrong. But then you get to the end of the season and it’s really more of a they’re exhausted and everything’s hurting and you're just trying to get through it,” Plocki said. “This is clearly the most prepared and the most excited I’ve ever had a team in 24 years going into this meet.”

Beilstien doesn’t believe any one thing needs to go right for the team to get a chance to sing the song it now knows exactly how to spell.

“I don’t think anything specifically needs to go right, I just think we need to go out there and train the way we’ve been training these past two weeks,” Beilstein said. “I think if we do that then everything is going to fall into place.”

Pete Cunningham covers sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at petercunningham@annarbor.com. Follow him on Twitter @petcunningham.