Knights show they're quickly getting in tune
In one of its final tuneups for the Mid-Suburban League boys gymnastics meet a week from today, Prospect put up its second-highest score of the season and claimed the top spot in the District 214 meet.
The host Knights accumulated 143.65 points to top Elk Grove (137.60), Buffalo Grove (124.55), Niles North (117.40), Hersey (116.10) and Rolling Meadows (116.07).
"It was a good meet for us," said Knights coach Pat Kivland. "We started out really bad but we had a good finish. Our only better score this year was a 146 in a meet with Hersey. Next Saturday, hopefully we'll hit our routines even better."
Rolling Meadows sophomore Marc Herff hit his routines as good as ever. He won the all-around with a score of 8.23 and posted the top score on the parallel bars with a 9.05.
"That's the first 9 I've ever scored in any event," Herff said. "It was pretty much my same routine but I just hit it almost perfect. All my routines hit well."
Prospect's first-place finish was boosted by Joe Napoleon's victory on the still rings (8.40), Jon Daoud's 9.55 winning score on the vault and Ben Raeder's first-place score of 8.70 on the horizontal bar.
Runner-up Elk Grove got a victory from senior Kamil Nytko to start the night with his 9.3 effort in the floor exercise.
"We did well compared to last week," said retiring Elk Grove coach Bill Watts. "We're starting to hit more routines and our scores showed that. Our vaulting is coming. We had four tsuks in which all our kids landed on their feet and that gave us a season-high score of 26.7 for the vault."'
The other individual winner was Rolling Meadows' junior John Scallon, who scored an 8.80 on the pommel horse.
"It takes a long time to be a good horseman," Kivland said. "That guy has done in one year what takes most gymnasts three or four. We coaches just don't see that a lot. Everyone says it's amazing how he has done it so fast."
Napoleon (7.91) was second in the all-around, followed by Juan Cervantes of Hersey (7.38), Joe Zajcew of Niles North (6.83) and Eugene Blackmon of Buffalo Grove (6.50)