Palatine puts it together, wins Foerch Invitational

Palatine wasn't the best team during Saturday's 24th Annual Dick Foerch Gymnastics Invitational at Naperville North. But the Pirates proved to be the best program as a cumulative total from the freshmen, sophomore and varsity teams was used to determine the winner.

The freshmen and sophomore teams both won for the Pirates while the varsity squad was narrowly edged by Highland Park/Deerfield co-op, 136.775-136.5. Thanks to their underclassmen, the Pirates rolled past the remaining six teams, finishing with 314.15 points. Runner-up Highland Park was a distant second at 280.375, followed by Elk Grove with 278.9.

"It was an average meet for us," Palatine coach Scott Hagel said. "We started out with some great (still) rings and great vaults and then unfortunately didn't keep that up through the meet."

Undoubtedly it's Damian Przystal and Mike Abram who make the Pirates go, and the two finished third and fourth respectively in the all-around for the Pirates.

Przystal was also second in the floor exercise and third on horizontal bar while Abram was fourth on parallel bars and floor exercise, and third on still rings.

"Mike and Damian are our backbone and we've got a good group of juniors and seniors after that who can step up at anytime," Hagel said. "Today it was good to see the underlevel perform well. This is the only meet all year where the team champion is varsity plus freshmen and sophomores together, so it was great to see everyone contribute to a championship."

Some of the others who stepped up for the Pirates, included Eric Holowick's 8.9 vault, Steve Repking's 8.8 vault and Dhruv Patel's 7.1 pommel horse.

"I was pleased with everyone," Przystal said. "We all worked together."

Competing for the first time of the season, Elk Grove was especially successful on horizontal bar and still rings en route to posting a 133.65.

"It was my first chance to see who I can count on to give me scores," Elk Grove coach Keith Mukai said. "I thought the guys did pretty well. We were sloppy in a lot of areas but we still scored so that tells me we have a strong team and can get even better."

Nick Alcazar was fifth on horizontal bar, Blake Tallafero took third on vault and Damiian Zukowski led the Grenadiers with an all-around total of 43.45 while also taking third on parallel bars and fourth on horizontal bars.

"I threw a trick on p-bars that I normally don't do," Zukowski said. "It's a flip pirouette and in practice I barely get it but somehow I got it today."

Host Naperville North was without one of its top gymnasts as junior Josh Soto did not compete due to illness. Billy Suta was fifth on parallel bars and was the Huskies lone all-arounder with a 43.5. Senior Kurt Hodges took fourth on still rings and pommel horse. The Naperville North program combined for fifth place with a 269.1, its varsity team was also fifth with a 108.65.

"With (Soto) out that took our score down," Hodges said. "But still as a whole I thought we did pretty well."

York senior Caleb Strejc, who finished seventh in the all-around in last May's IHSA state finals, captured the all-around championship with a 52.35. Strejc won floor exercise, horizontal bar, pommel horse and tied for first on parallel bars.

"I started out slow with the fall on vault but I kept my head up," Strejc said. "I stayed positive and it turned out good in the end."

The Dukes' Tim Drahokoupil sealed second in the all-around around with a 47.75.