Girls gymnastics: Carmel second at New Trier Invite
Lyndsey Basara of Carmel Catholic matched her season best vault score with a 9.7 for a second time this season at the New Trier Holiday Gymnastics Invitational on Saturday afternoon in Northfield. Carmel finished runner-up to host New Trier 145.1 to 144.525 in the eight-team field.
Basara had the same score at the Conant invitational just a couple of weeks ago in landing a Yurchenko tuck full vault.
But she had a little bit of extra effort and inspiration with her older sister Emily in attendance on Saturday. Emily was a Warren graduate and currently competes in college gymnastics at Northern Illinois University.
Lyndsey Basara has been working hard to get better for the season and earned top honors on vault.
“I've been practicing a lot and working hard, especially during the summer I was doing a lot of reps along with a lot of team support,” Basara said. “(Emily) does push me more, because I've looked up at her for so long. It also makes me nervous because she's so good. But it's definitely motivating to see her here in the stands cheering me on.”
Basara also finished fourth in the all around (36.5) and fourth on the floor (9.325).
Her teammate, Izzy Kropiwiec, won the top spot in the all around (37.175). She also placed second on the balance beam (9.375) behind New Trier's Maeve Murdock (9.425) along with the runner-up spot on vault (9.575) and a second-place tie with her Carmel teammate Clare Keane on bars (9.1). “Izzy had a beautiful meet,” Carmel coach Sarah Doyle said. “Her and I have worked really hard. The best thing that I can do with her is mentally help her approach in gymnastics. She's so hard on herself and such a perfectionist. She needs to soften it up a bit and today was good evidence that it's working. for us.”
As a team, for the second straight week, Carmel found itself in the second spot behind New Trier and these teams could be in a big battle with one another when they meet again in the sectional.
The Corsairs still have some things to work on for the second half of the season and they had issues on the beam and bars Saturday but still had a respectable team score.
“Everything is fair, but you can't have four falls on beam and have two falls on bars,” Doyle added. “We'll figure out what we need to change and what we need to keep to be in the best position to succeed.”
Stevenson finished fifth with a team score of 135.2, but the Patriots were without one of their elite gymnasts, Emily Weinstein, who missed competing in the invitational with an illness.
“Our score was good with Emily out,” Stevenson coach Judy Harwood said. “We could've been higher with our score. She was out because she wasn't feeling well. We did pretty well without our best all-arounder. It shows that we're a deeper team.”
Fremd also had to deal with a couple of gymnasts that were out of the invite — Gianna Christodoulopoulos (hand) and San Shirmer (back) — on vault and floor.
The Vikings placed sixth (133.75) right behind Stevenson.
“I think we lost focus a couple of times today,” Fremd coach Kacey Kronforst said. “We definitely need to work on that in the gym. We had a couple of injuries that we had to deal with and we had to switch around our lineup at the last minute. I'm still proud of them of what they did. It was a good experience for the younger girls.”
Annika Waller chalked up a fourth-place spot on the bars (9.075). for the Vikings.