'Little giant' Mauk makes quite a first impression

Competing in his first Mid-Suburban League meet, freshman Joey Mauk already earned himself quite a compliment from Conant boys gymnastics coach Paul Kim on Thursday night.

"He's a little giant," Kim said after watching Mauk help lead the Cougars to a 149.8 score to beat host Fremd (131.6) and visiting Barrington (101.3).

Mauk, who stands about 5 feet, certainly made his mark Thursday, winning the all-around with a 51.6 score.

His teammates Anthony Crivolio (49.40) and Steve Rink (48.8) were second and third, respectively.

"I expected to be more clean," said Mauk, who learned the ropes at the Premier Gymnastics Academy in Downers Grove. "I didn't expect to mess up some of the tricks that I tried."

Mauk still won the parallel bars (8.5), still rings (8.7) and pommel horse (8.3) and was second on the vault, horizontal bar and floor exercise (tied with Fremd's Brandon Trostrud).

"He tried to clean up his routines," Kim said. "He has a tendency to rush things through, so we tried to slow him down a little."

There was no slowing down the Cougars from winning the meet, as they were just .02 away from their goal.

"I was hoping for a 150, but this was not our best effort," Kim said. "Anthony had a couple of events that he could have brought up by 2 points. But overall, it was a very good start."

Crivolio won the vault (9.2), horizontal bars (8.5) and tied for first on the floor with Barrington's Kellen O'Connor (9.2).

"Now this shows us that we have a good shot at possibly scoring higher," Crivolio said. "Overall, we had a good meet and we're happy with the way we started out."

Rink took second place on the pommel horse (8.0) and parallel bars (8.0) and was third on the vault (8.6) and horizontal bar (8.1).

Fremd sophomore Bobby Wongkamalasai made some history as he became the first Vikings male gymnast to perform a Yurchenko. (The gymnast does a round-off onto the springboard and a back handspring onto the vaulting table followed by either a simple single tuck or as difficult as a triple twist layout.

"And he's possibly the first male gymnast in Illinois high school competition to do it," said Fremd coach Tim Hamman.

"I've been working on it for the whole year," Wongkamalasai said. "It paid off but I would have liked to have landed it (8.2 score). For a long time, I wanted to do something that no one else does. I said, 'why not be unique and different from everyone else?' "

Hamman said the Vikings are battling injuries and illness. Senior Dave Allison did not compete because of illness.

"We really must put it together at the end of the season," Hamman said. "I think we have much higher potential."