Lake Park sees improvement

As long as Lake Park freshman Kelly Zehnder sees improvement in her girls gymnastics routines, she's happy.

Zehnder helped the Lancers placed fourth at Saturday's Neuqua Valley Invite with a 135.2. She was fourth in the all-around with a 35.45.

"It was one of the best meets I've had," she said. "Obviously, I could've performed better, but we've improved a lot from where we started and our score continues to go up."

Zehnder shined on beam, placing fourth with a 9.25.

"That was one of the best beam routines I've done this season," she said. "I thought it was solid. I just have to keep working on it like I did (on Saturday)."

Linnae Capuder added an 8.75 on vault and Chloe Capuder contributed an 8.6 on bars for the Lancers. Chloe also won the second annual post-invite handstand competition.

"We ended up about where we've been recently," Lancers coach Jake Luketin said. "The girls competing have been adding skills and when you do that, sometimes there's potential to lose a little bit in execution, but hopefully they'll get more consistent and it'll pay off at the end-of-season push heading into regionals."

Hinsdale South's Maddie Nowak missed her sophomore season due to an elbow injury.

The junior had surgery last winter to remove bone chips and repaired torn cartilage. On Saturday afternoon she found herself called to the awards stand five times, and she placed in the top five in all four events while winning the all-around with a 37.2.

"Coming off of finals and everything, I'm definitely pretty happy overall," she said. "It wasn't my best meet individually but I was consistent throughout so I was happy."

Nowak helped the Hornets snag third place with a 136.

"Some of the girls are hurting right now, but we still were able to get third," Nowak said. "We have to be happy with that."

Prairie Ridge co-op, the state's highest-scoring team, won with a 143.525, despite being without the injured Riley Mahoney in the lineup and fellow standout all-arounder Rachael Underwood only doing bars and beam. Lincoln-Way co-op was second with a 139.4

Addison Trail placed fifth with a 133.25. Sophomore Kenney O'Neill was fantastic, scoring a 9.4 on beam and taking third place in the all-around with a 36.3.

"I'm real excited. This was probably the best meet I've had all season," she said. "I just came into this meet very positive and told myself it's not a conference meet so there's less pressure. I just tried to do the best I could and it worked out."

The host Wildcats took sixth with a 132.325.

Isis Ruff, who won the standing back tuck competition, led Neuqua Valley with a 34.1 in the all-around. Emily Jacobs scored a 33.5 and Colleen Moauro had a 32.9.

"You want to start putting it all together now that it's January," Wildcats coach Anthony Avella said. "Their spirits were up and they had a pretty good meet overall."

Waubonsie Valley/Metea Valley co-op's Claire Samojedny wasn't at her best, but she still took fifth in the all-around with a 35.2. The team finished in seventh place with a 131.5.

"It wasn't my best day, but it still felt pretty amazing to place fifth with all these amazing schools here," she said. "I had a little fender bender in warmups and injured my knee, but it didn't hurt me too much."

Marianna Georgiou, Emma Holtan and Jessica Houghton also had busy days as all-arounders for Waubonsie Valley/Metea Valley co-op.