Libertyville’s wild ride continues
The early part of the boys gymnastics season has been a bit of a roller coaster ride for Libertyville.
The host Wildcats continued their “up and down” trend Thursday night with a pretty solid performance on their senior night, but it was not quite enough to pull off a victory over Glenbrook North.
The Spartans got the job done without their full lineup intact as they came away with a 128.2 to 122.4 nonconference victory over Libertyville (0-5) to remain undefeated at 4-0.
Glenbrook North was competing without the services of key senior all-arounder Nate Elfant and three other specialists which prevented the Spartans from scoring anywhere near their season-high 142.8 mark.
But sophomore Corey Snyder was a difference-maker for Glenbrook North in the dual meet as he scored 50.7 points to easily win the all-around competition.
The Spartans’ Kevin Shanazi took second place overall with 41.6 points to barely edge Libertyville freshman Adrian Metcalf (41.1 points) in third overall.
The Wildcats have struggled with their consistency as a team this spring as they scored a season-high 130.8 nine days ago against rival Mundelein before falling back down to the 110-point range in their next outing.
Libertyville did have some difficulty on pommel horse Thursday night with 17.0 points on that event. But for the most part the Wildcats were very steady on vault (26.0), floor exercise (25.2), and parallel bars (19.7).
“They’ve been up and down as a team, we just have to get a little more consistency,” said Libertyville coach Josh Cimo. “Last week we had three meets and now this is our fourth meet tonight so we really haven’t had much gym-time to practice.”
Shanazi was the vaulting champion with a 9.1 followed by Libertyville junior co-captains Ben Reichert (8.9) in second and Jack Burke (8.8) in third.
Shanazi also took home first place on parallel bars with an 8.0 while Reichert was the runner-up on that event with a 7.5.
“We did really well, I think we struggled a little bit on pommel horse, but we picked it up on still rings,” said Reichert, who competes on every event except floor exercise. “I think routines in practice will be our key and we need to continue to work on routines.”
The Spartans swept the top three places on floor exercise behind Shanazi (9.4), Snyder (9.3), and Philip Morreale (8.9). Metcalf placed fourth on floor with an 8.8.
“We went 128 without all of those (four) guys so I can’t complain about that,” said Glenbrook North coach Ryan Dul, whose team scored 27.6 points on floor exercise. “Corey (Snyder) fell on vault and parallel bars wasn’t quite there, but everything else he hit.”
Snyder was the individual champ on pommel horse (8.9), high bar (8.4), and still rings (8.2). Metcalf placed second on still rings with a 6.4 while teammate Mark Pickar was second on pommel horse with a 6.3. Libertyville’s Ryan Flores (6.0) placed third on pommel horse.
“Adrian has been hitting a lot of his routines, but tonight he had a fall on pommel horse and two falls on parallel bars,” added Cimo, whose team only trailed 105.6 to 105.0 after five events. “Ben Reichert did really well tonight on still rings, parallel bars, and vault.”