Fremd finishes off undefeated regular season

It was a night for some bests as the regular season wound up for girls gymnastics at Conant Wednesday.

Fremd won the triangular meet with a 141.55. It earned the Vikings an undefeated regular dual meet season in the Mid-Suburban League West. Fremd will look to capture the MSL title outright with a solid performance at the conference meet next Wednesday at Conant.

"It went good for us," Fremd coach Kacey Kronforst said. "We looked a little tired and shaken in warmups, but the girls pulled it together."

The Vikings got big performances from Kate Watson, who won the floor with a 9.25; Sam Shirmer, who won the vault with a 9.20; Annika Waller, who was tops on the bars with a 9.00, and Gianna Christodoulopoulos, who posted the highest all-around score with a 35.80.

"The past three weeks we have made great strides in the right direction," Watson said. "Our focus has been to get what we have been practicing into our meets."

One of the sore points for the Vikings has been their beam. Although they hit on 2 of 5 performances, it was still an improvement from previous meets.

"I think we are going in the right direction," Christodoulopoulos said. "We had an improvement on the beam and that is good."

Katie Vessel also came up big for Fremd, scoring a 35.50 in the all-around while Ella Gray and Cate Banzen also had good performances.

It was Senior Night for Conant and the Cougars delivered their best performance of the season. Conant scored a 137.50 to easily outdo their best score of 136.25 from earlier this month.

"It was a very good night," said Conant coach Anthony Avella, who moved up seniors Marina Sputnik and Kelly Guagenti. "I was happy with the way they competed. The whole team did great."

Danielle Smith won the beam with a 9.50 while Sarah Tauchner was second with a 9.35. Lea Faouaz also had a big performance on the floor with her second-place finish with a 9.20.

Julia Betts, who was in a car accident earlier this season, has worked her way back into competing and threw her first vault of the season and scored an 8.45. Betts also competed on the floor and beam.

Mikaela Kaminski also scored well for the Cougars.

Wheeling senior Jessica Stavros had never missed a meet in her four years of varsity gymnastics. On Tuesday, she opted to sit out a meet to ice a sore back. She said it was the best decision she ever made.

With her back, "feeling great," Stavros came out with the best performance of her career on the beam, scoring a 9.25 to finish third in the event and help Wheeling to a 118.10.

"We decided that if I was going to do well in one of the meets, I would have to skip the other one," Stavros said. "And it paid off. My back feels great and I had my best beam routine ever."

Emily Lucas, Emily Zajac and Maydelin Alfaro each competed all-around for Wheeling and earned praise from their coach for their performances.

"We had more ups than downs," Wheeling coach Rachel Wheeler said. "We had the girls add some new skills to their routines and it worked out well."