Wheaton heading back to state meet

Wheaton co-op simply keeps on winning.

The team scored a season-best 153.15 points to easily win Wednesday's Wheaton Warrenville South sectional.

Naperville North was the distant runner-up with a 141.8.

It was the sixth straight sectional title for Wheaton, and it will make its seventh consecutive appearance in the state finals. The team will look to win a fourth straight state championship when it travels to Hinsdale Central on May 15.

"They did really well tonight," Wheaton coach Greg Gebhardt said. "They just keep plugging away, and the thing is this wasn't how they practiced (on Monday), so to see them respond like this and compete says a lot."

Ben Szot won the all-around with a 53.5, and Lucas Cooperman took second with a 51.3 to pace Wheaton.

"We had a great start going 5-for-5 on pommel horse," Cooperman said. "That's not very common to do, and I think that set the tone for the entire meet."

Szot also won pommel horse with a 9.0, parallel bars with a 9.05 and high bar with an 8.75.

"We have our stars and Ben and Lucas work so hard, but you have to have role players too," Gebhardt said. "Guys can be hot and cold, and some guys fizzle out at times."

Those role players came up big once again. Adam DeCrane had an 8.55 on floor and 9.15 on vault, which was the second-best score on the night.

"My floor was actually the best I've done," he said. "Vault was a PR too, I think, so it was a very exciting night."

Other keys scores included Alec Modransky's 8.05 on pommel horse, Austin Tate's 7.1 on still rings and 6.65 on high bar and Cory Drummond's 8.5 on parallel bars.

Naperville North's Brandon Louise took fifth in the all-around with a 47.5 to qualify for state, but whether or not the Huskies' entire team will join him is a big question mark.

The Huskies' score might be good enough to earn one of the three at-large qualifiers, but they won't know until late Saturday night.

"The only way I think it looks good is if we're sitting as the first at-large team going into Saturday, then you know it's going to take three teams to beat you," Huskies coach Brad Foerch said. "I knew we had to be second and in the 140s, so I guess I have to be as happy as I can be right now."

Yudai Okabe placed fourth on still rings with an 8.4 to also advance for the Huskies, while Mike Matz also qualified by taking fifth on high bar with a 7.8.

Neuqua Valley senior Wes Diveney had never competed high school gymnastics prior to this year, but he found himself walking up to the award stand on four separate occasions.

Diveney took fourth in the all-around with a 49.6 and also placed on pommel horse, still rings and won vault.

"I'm locked in to go to UIC, so I figured this was the right year for me to do it," he said. "I was pretty pleased with how things went overall."

Naperville Central took fourth place with a 138.05.

Although an injury kept him from competing in the all-around, Ryan Durkin still took third on high bar, second on pommel horse and win still rings. Still there was some disappointment that the Redhawks couldn't post a higher team score.

"We just tried to turn away any negative energy and turn it into something positive for the next event," Durkin said. "I thought we did a good job of responding each time."

Naperville Central's Karl Jungquist also qualified for state. He advanced on the floor exercise with a fifth-place effort of 8.7.