Boys gymnastics: Fremd outlasts Barrington, Conant
Barrington's Braedon Wever took some friendly advice and turned it into a safe landing on Tuesday at the Fremd boys gymnastics triangular in Palatine.
Wever, who is a junior, was competing in an invitational last Saturday at Lyons in LaGrange when the judge on the floor event explained a way that Wever could improve his floor score.
"We went to Lyons and the judge told him that if he would just hit his landings it is a real nice set," Barrington coach Rob DeFano said. "Well, today he hit everything. It was the best set of his life."
Wever had an extremely clean routine, landing each of his three passes and was awarded a career-best 9.40 on the floor.
"It was exciting," said Wever, who received a 9.00 last Saturday at Lyons for a similar routine without the perfect landings. "I got to stick all of my passes. I just have to tweak a few things on my last pass and some others here and there and I can improve my score even more."
Barrington needed that performance and that of Alex Kim. The Broncos were knocked down with five of their members out sick. But Wever had the top all-around score with a 46.40 and Kim posted the top score on the rings (8.60) and parallel bars (8.20).
That enabled Barrington to finish with a 120.10. The Broncos were outscored by Fremd, which had a 130.60, but were able to hold off Conant, which had a 119.90.
"We patched together a lineup and tried to do the best we could," DeFano said. "We are just trying to stay clean."
Fremd got another solid performance from Lukas Styczen, who hit his Gienger again on the high bar on the final performance of the meet. He scored a 7.90, which was the top score of the event, and went on to finish with 45.60 in the all-around.
The Vikings also got good performances from Yuto Nakagawa, who scored 40.30 in the all-around. Darien Goodchild posted the top score on the pommel horse with a 7.40 while Tatsuki Kato, Matthew Walker and Dimitar Hristov performed well.
"It is pretty exciting to get a couple of wins," said Fremd coach Jason Brandenburg, who is in his first season and hosted his first home meet.
"Our team had a lot of energy. It seems like we are taking all the energy from one meet and carrying it over to the next. We need to keep it moving and hopefully carry it through the season."
Conant is still reeling from losing Jared Prill to a broken wrist, which Prill suffered last Saturday at Niles West. The Cougars still got a nice performance from Caleb Savoy, who had the top score on the vault with an 8.90.
"We are looking forward to continuing on," Conant coach Paul Kim said. " We have a little break from the competition until next Tuesday. That will give us a chance to fill some holes and improve our skills."