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Progress apparent for high-scoring Libertyville

Thursday night's dual meet at Glenbrook North was a really good sign for the Libertyville boys gymnastics team.

After almost reaching 136 points last week at the Hinsdale Central Invitational, the visiting Wildcats rolled to a season-high 142.2 score Thursday to easily topple the host Spartans with 130.7 points in this nonconference battle.

While Glenbrook North (2-2) almost hit a season-high mark coming off its spring break last week, Libertyville (1-2) showed great improvement despite not having senior Alex Pong in the all-around competition due to an ankle injury.

Pong did have a great meet, hitting four-for-four on every event he attempted except for floor exercise and vault.

But it was truly a team effort by the Wildcats in soaring to the season-high score as they hit a 25.5 on vault, a 24.7 on parallel bars, and a 24.1 on still rings.

"It was probably (Pong's) best meet overall, he hit everything, and he hit it with form," said Libertyville coach Josh Cimo, whose team is gearing up for the Bohl Invitational next weekend at Mundelein. "He (Pong) has really been the anchor of the team, and we're still planning to have him compete in the all-around by the end of the season."

Glenbrook North's Corey Snyder was the all-around champion with an 8.47 average (50.8 points) while Libertyville sophomore Adrian Metcalf (42.9 points) placed second overall as he continues to recover from an injury.

"Coming off of spring break where we had a lot of kids who missed (practice) I thought it was a good meet," said Glenbrook North coach Ryan Dul, whose team hit a meet-high 25.8 points on vault. "It was just a good chance to try a lot of new things we were working on during spring break - and we had some hits and some misses tonight."

Pong had some big hits in the meet as he pulled off a successful release move before hitting his high bar dismount and a first-place 9.2 score on that event.

Pong closed out the meet by hitting his parallel bars routine with a winning score of 9.1 and he also added a first-place 8.9 on still rings for Libertyville.

Pong and Snyder (7.8) tied for first place on pommel horse followed closely by Libertyville's Ryan Flores (7.7) on that event.

Snyder was also the individual champion on vault (9.1), and floor exercise (9.0).

Libertyville senior co-captain Jack Burke (along with Ben Reichert) placed second on vault with an 8.9 and third on parallel bars with an 8.0.

Reichert was also a key contributor with third-place marks of 7.9 on still rings and 6.6 on high bar, which was a real struggle for most gymnasts in the meet.

"This is the best we've been in a couple of years, we've got a lot of skill here," said Burke, who pointed to a lot of keys to the Wildcats' new found success. "On parallel bars we kept our form tight, Alex Pong (was key), and we work as a team and cheer each other on."

Glenbrook North's Noah Berkowitz took second place on floor exercise with an 8.3 while teammate Ben Stoehr and Metcalf (8.0) tied for third on floor.

Snyder was the runner-up on parallel bars (8.6), still rings (8.5), and high bar (7.8).

"Coming into this meet we were trying to restructure our routines a lot, and we threw some new things in to see how they would score for us," added Cimo, whose team scored 23.6 points on floor exercise. "We came back and rallied in the last three events and Adrian (Metcalf) is still not throwing a full set that he's capable of doing due to his injury. He is still doing some watered down routines, but he should be peaking by regionals."

The Wildcats held a 95.8 to 90.3 advantage after four events before pulling away from the Spartans on the last two events.

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