Neuqua Valley prepping for regionals

With only two weeks to 18 days before Waubonsie Valley, Neuqua Valley and Geneva compete in their respective regionals, the gymnasts have little time to perfect their routines, especially the peaks and higher-difficulty levels they have been working on to boost their personal and team scores.

During Monday's quadrangular meet at Neuqua Valley the gymnasts incorporated plenty of leaps, twists, turns and tumbling passes, but it was the Wildcats who made the biggest leap in performance, easily finishing ahead of the Warriors, Thunderbolts and Vikings with a score of 136.9.

While this time of season usually affords the Wildcats a chance to stretch out their gymnasts for an extensive postseason run, coach Jaclyn Messerges was just happy to have her full lineup compete for the first time.

"We had all our varsity for the first time this season so that was something new," she said. "Otherwise we had a couple new skills, but most of it was watered down."

Bryn Walsh was the lone winner for the Wildcats. She closed out Neuqua Valley's performance with a 9.3 on the vault. Catherine Miller earned a pair of second-place finishes on bars (9.35) and beam (9.05) and Amanda Keegan finished third on beam (8.55).

"It was nice to finally see everyone being able to compete at the same time to see where we're at," Messerges said. "We're still so watered down so we still haven't reached our peak yet, so now we work on getting where we can and keeping everyone healthy."

Waubonsie Valley struggled with a 133.9, which disappointed coach Lacy Woulfe primarily because only one of her gymnasts was incorporating new skills.

"We didn't add anything to anyone else than Cassy (Waldman)," Woulfe said.

"We'll be working on cleaning up and sharpening things in practice. We don't have much practice time in January and that's the hard part, but we need to sharpen what we do have."

Waldman was working on new things in virtually every event and she found success with a second-place vault (9.2) and floor (9.1)

"We added a punch front at the end (of her floor) so that was different today," Woulfe said. "She did her pike again on vault and she put in her double fly away on bars but landed a little short. Hopefully she'll clean these up and we can add another punch front."

Danielle Christy added a pair of third-place finishes for the Warriors on bars (9.1) and floor (9.0).

Geneva's Katherine Grubaugh worked in a pike tsuk on her vault to earn third place (8.9). Grubaugh was the only Vikings gymnast to work in a new skill on Monday night.

"She did pretty well," Geneva coach Kim Hostman said. "She stumbled on her second one, but hopefully she can get more height on it. She had been between 8.9 and 9.1 and I think she can do really well with it."

Geneva sophomore Cami Pfetzer didn't work any new skills but Hostman expects her to do so in Saturday's invite at Riverside-Brookfield.

"She has some things and on Saturday we hope we can get them in," she said. "You don't want to get into conference with anything that's totally new so we'll try to add them on Saturday and then go from there."