Fremd edges out Hoffman Estates
It's just the second week of competition for girls gymnastics and teams are hoping for a little step up in improvement.
For Fremd and Hoffman Estates it was like more like a long jump Thursday night.
Fremd swept the top four spots in the first two events and went on to score a 142.25 to beat host Hoffman Estates, which finished with a 136.50.
"We had an invite last weekend and not exactly how we hoped it had gone," said Fremd coach Kacey Kronforst, whose Vikings scored a 134.60 last week to win a dual meet and a 102.75 in the Downers Grove Invitational where only three scores count.
"We went back to practice and trained hard. They did well, especially on vault."
On the vault, Fremd had the top four spots. Gianna Christodoulopoulos and Kate Watson each had a 9.40. Sam Shirmer and Katie Vessel tied for third with a 9.25 as Fremd piled up an impressive 37.30 on the event.
The Vikings were not as outstanding on the parallel bars, but still came away with a 35.50. Annika Waller led the Vikings with a 9.20. Shirmer and Christodoulopoulos each had 8.90 while Ella Gray posted an 8.50 for Fremd, which had 72.80 at the break.
The Vikings came away with a good floor performance. Watson (9.00), Waller (8.80), Christodoulopoulos (8.60), Shirmer (8.60) and Vessell (8.60) were all solid.
Fremd then melted on the beam. The Vikings scored a 34.45, counting at least four falls in the process.
"It just shows that we have a ways to go," Kronforst said. "I stopped counting the falls after the first couple. The rest of the meet was good. The girls have been working hard."
Christodoulopoulos, who finished second in the all-around with a 35.60 said the Vikings need to keep working.
"I thought we came our really strong," said Christodoulopoulos, who is a senior. "We had some bumps in the road. We think we got a little tired. It is late and it was little hot in here. But I know we will go back tomorrow in the gym and spend like an hour on the beam."
While Fremd cooled off in the second part of the meet, Hoffman heated up.
The Hawks were exceptional on the beam where Elyssa Wuerffel, who is a freshman, won the event with a 9.40. Charlie Campos, who is a junior, finished second with a 9.10 while Hunter Freye, also a junior, scored an 8.80.
The Hawks, who scored just 120.25 last week in a dual meet, improved tremendously on that score.
"We did a much better job than we have done all year," Hoffman Estates coach Dave Calisch said. "We came out slow last week, but we worked pretty hard to fix some of those problems. We looked a lot better tonight."
Wuerfell also had the top score on the floor with 9.95. Those two scores along with her early performance on the vault (9.20) and the bars (8.39) gave her an all-around scored of 36.40, which was good enough to win the meet.