Burke vaults Vikes
They come to see Mary Burke, and the Fremd senior gymnast never seems to disappoint.
In a typical Mid-Suburban League girls gymnastics performance by Burke and her teammates, Fremd won the meet with 149.550 points while Palatine finished a distant second with 144.275 points.
Burke, in what has become habit for her, won all four events and the all-around.
"I had a really good night," said Burke, who isn't always happy with her performance though rarely with her effort, and always seems to win. "I was happy with everything. I was pretty solid today."
What does the conference meet mean to the Vikings?
"We see it as the start of the postseason, work out all the mistakes," said Burke, whose winning all-around score of 39.3 tied her sister Katie -- a senior at Iowa -- for the highest all-around score in school history. "Regional and sectionals are up next and this gives us a chance to see where we're at.
"We're all ready. We have to practice the little things."
"Mary Burke had a great meet," said Fremd coach Jim Guest. "This meet is a separate entity from the season and postseason. At the same time the conference is a source of pride."
Palatine had 4 falls in the meet, all of them on beam, yet still managed to score 4.55 more than third-place Barrington. Fremd had 5 falls, 4 on beam and 1 on floor.
Barrington finally accomplished its season-long goal in the final meet of the season.
"We haven't broken 140 this year, so why not do it at conference?" said Fillies coach Jason Loeffler. "We only had two falls on beam. That's the first time we did that this year. It was a team effort."
Another team on the rise is Hersey, which placed 7th with a score of 135.0. Last year, the Huskies were consistently in the 110s.
"The girls are working tremendously hard this year," said Hersey coach Mason Vernon, who was voted coach of the year in the MSL. "We're finally at full strength. We're putting in new tricks. We tried a lot of them tonight. It's going real well. Hopefully we'd like to push as many as we can to sectionals."