On balance, Fremd is still a champion

What to you do when you have a subpar balance beam performance?

If you're the Fremd gymnastics team, you simply make up for it on vault, bars and floor.

That's what the Vikings did at their own eight-team invitational Saturday afternoon. Fremd scored 38.4 on vault, 37.95 on bars, 37.7 on floor and 35.8 during a shaky beam effort.

Still, put it all together and you get a total score of 149.85, good enough to win the meet.

"We did a great job in three events," said Fremd coach Jim Guest. "We need one more event to add to it. It's something we're going to have to correct.

"What stood out to me was, this was our fourth meet in the last eight days. The schedule has been really tough on the kids."

Did Fremd come into the meet with a particular goal in mind?"

"Every time we have strong competition, I just want to hit," Guest said. "I try not to think about numbers. I try not to look at places or scores. Just performances."

"The purpose of the meet was to come here and have a good meet, get ready for conference," said Fremd senior Mary Burke, who won vault (9.9), bars (9.7), beam (9.85), floor (9.7) and the all-around (39.150). "I came out and did 4-for-4. I was better than my last meet. That motivated me. I wanted to prove to myself I could do better."

St. Charles Co-op finished fourth with a season-high 142.4 points.

"We definitely improved," said St. Charles coach Amy Lill. "At the beginning of the season we started out kind of slow. Not that slow, but then out scores started coming up.

"We have all very strong girls. We're getting more consistent. We're still adding new tricks but it's a matter of just hitting each event. With every meet, our girls improve."

Naperville Central ended up in sixth place with 132.4 points.

"I can't complain," said Central coach Glen Riemers. "We were trying for 134 today but we blew floor."

Naperville Central scored 33.0 on vault, 33.3 on bars, 33.35 on beam and 32.75 on floor.

"Our team was pretty good on beam," Riemers said. "We were not bad on bars. Vault was not good. Floor, we had some falls."