Plenty of winners at Wood Invite
Gary Wood adored his three children and loved gymnastics. Wood competed at Willowbrook in the early 1960s, situated himself in the stands to cheer on his three kids in the 1980s and ’90s, gave back to the sport as a judge in the ’90s and attended all but one state meet from 1987 until 2009 as a fan.
Wood lost his battle with cancer in February 2010. In dedication to his love of gymnastics and his children’s admiration to him as their father, the Gary Wood Memorial Invite took place in his honor on Saturday at Willowbrook.
Coached by Wood’s youngest son, Lee Wood, Glenbard East was one of four participating teams. Gary’s oldest, son, Todd, was one of the two judges on Saturday. Lastly, daughter Joy was one of nearly 20 family members in the bleachers to honor Gary Wood.
It was a very nice tribute to Mr. Wood and we were happy to be a part of it,” Hinsdale Central coach Mark Wanner said. “The thing I really liked about it was it was a total team effort with all five scores counting. It really promoted the whole team concept.”
Hinsdale Central won with a 178. Glenbard East was the runner-up with a 166.4, following by host Willowbrook’s 158.5 and Glenbard South’s 156.3.
In addition to each team counting each of its competing gymnasts’ scores, the Invite presented a few unique awards.
Selected by the judges, The Woody Award was presented to the gymnast whose routine demonstrated the best virtuosity.
“My dad loved the fun part of the sport,” Lee Wood said. “Virtuosity used to be such a big part of judging and he really like that aspect so we wanted to have an award for it.”
In essence, virtuosity is the graceful flowing and seamless completion of a series of skills. Glenbard East’s Kevin Noyola won The Woody Award while winning the floor exercise with an 8.6.
“I felt pretty confident with how I did but had no idea about the award,” Noyola said. “It’s a nice surprise. This is my first year of gymnastics. I’m only a freshman, so this is pretty special.”
The audience was asked to vote on a pair of awards. The first was for Best Form and the second was for Best Dismount.
Glenbard East’s Cole Finn won for Best Form. Finn took second place on floor with an 8.3. He added a 7.8 on vault.
“I’ve been working on form a lot,” he said.
Willowbrook’s Garrett Acker took home the Best Dismount honor.
“It’s cool. I wasn’t expecting it at all,” Acker said. “It’s really something all of us are working on everyday.”
Hinsdale Central’s Dave Hutchinson was the lone multi-event winner, taking top honors on pommel horse with a 7.3 and parallel bars with a 6.5. Nate Wiegland won on still rings with an 8.1 and Salik Ghaus won on horizontal bar with a 5.0 for the Red Devils.
We’re still relying on a lot of different people to help out,” Wanner said. “It’s still early in the season, and there are some rough spots, but we saw some good things today.”
Glenbard South’s Charlie Tincher was second on vault with an 8.3, and Brian Bengstrom and Pat Yasutake tied for third place with an 8.2. Kevin Lang finished with a 31.1 in the all-around for the Raiders.
“It was nice how this meet did things different to highlight the kids,” Glenbard South coach Steve Young said. “We improved our score from last time which was nice.”
Robo Sullivan won vault with an 8.9 and Sonny Serrano took second place on still rings with a 6.7 for Glenbard East.
“We had a meet on Wednesday that was a little helter skelter,” Wood said. “They picked up where they needed to, so it’s good to see the kids moving forward. Today some guys were moved up and everyone had to produce since we counted all five scores.”
Willowbrook’s Cody Golz received The Best All-Arounder award, scoring a 34.4.
“You never expect to medal or win anything, but it’s always nice to get recognized for your hard work,” Golz said. “Everyone did great today. It was a very fun meet.”
After the success on Saturday, Lee Wood plans on making the Gary Wood Memorial Invite an annual event.
“I think everyone loved having five gymnasts go up and five down,” he said. “It was a lot of fun and we’ll look at maybe adding a few more teams next year.”