Batavia breaks school record

During a short respite between rotations at Saturday's Independent Conference, The Beatles "Help!" blared through the speaker system at Glenbard South.

While John, Paul, George and Ringo may have sung for help, Batavia's all-arounders, Danae, Rachel, Emma and Becca, along with the rest of the Bulldogs girls gymnastics team, certainly didn't need any.

Batavia put the finishing touches on an amazing two-year run, which saw them go undefeated in conference in consecutive seasons and win two straight conference meet championships. On Saturday, they once again broke the school record for highest team score, by posting a 142.9, easily ahead of second place Riverside Brookfield's 134.5.

"We are always shooting for the school record and winning conference again was a plus," said senior Rachel Besic, who finished fourth in the all-around with a 35.5. "It was kind of a surprise to win conference last year and this year we wanted to do the same."

The Bulldogs received a tremendous performance from junior Danae Fuqua, who finished second to Besic in the all-around last year. Fuqua won the floor exercise (9.425) and finished among the top three in her other events.

"I felt great today," Fuqua said. "I thought things went really well, but there's always some things we'd like to fix before our next meet."

One would be shocked if senior Alessandra Bronzino fiddles with her floor routine before next Thursday's Oswego regional. Bronzino incorporated all new passes in her routine and posted a career-best 9.4.

"She changed every tumbling pass which upgraded everything," Batavia coach Taryn Boyce said. "I was floored."

Geneva's standout freshman Kaitlyn Kanarowski made her presence known. Kanarowski finished in second place on bars and posted the fifth highest all-around total to lead Geneva to a fourth place finish.

"I've scored higher on bar before but I did okay and finished second," Kanarowski said. "My vault and floor were very good too. It's very exciting to have this kind of success at this meet as a freshman." The Vikings also received an 8.275 on beam from Cami Pfetzer, an 8.750 on vault from Shannon Vigna and a 9.1 on floor exercise from specialist Emily Ott.

Host Glenbard South scored a season-high 128.350 to claim fifth place. Michelle Kohout led the Raiders on vault and bars while Kristen McWilliams posted the squad's top scores on beam and floor exercise.

"A season high is always good going into regionals," Glenbard South coach Donna Murphy said. "We threw in a few things before regional and we'll take a closer look at them on Monday."

Slow but continual progress was evidenced once again by Fenton, which saw sophomore Becky Aichele unveil a Yurchenko vault for the first time. Her 8.6 score was the highest for the Bison who finished with a 121.7. Sarah Polvi's 33.275 was the top all-around total for Fenton.