Fremd outduels Schaumburg, Prospect

Fremd turned a triangle into a straight line.

The Vikings were originally scheduled for a girls gymnastics dual meet with Schaumburg on Thursday. But when Fremd's meet last week with Prospect was canceled due to a mechanical failure at Prospect, the Knights were added to Thursday's match.

Fremd ended up on top of both Schaumburg and Prospect with the Vikings scoring 141.70. Prospect tallied 140.60 while Schaumburg scored a 132.75.

"I thought we did great," Fremd coach Kacey Kronforst said. "We started off real strong on vault and floor is always a good event for us to finish on. I thought we did a good job recovering. When things don't go their way on one event, they were able to come back strong on the next."

The Vikings have a strong mix of seniors with Katie Vessell and Sam Shirmer and a pair of freshmen in Abigail Gallicho and Kacey Tokunga. They then mix in Riley Kruse, Ella Gray, Cate Banzen and Gina Aretos to give them some depth.

Vessell, who had the top score on the floor with a 9.00 and had a 35.05 in the all-around, said that the seniors are helping their young freshmen with adjusting to varsity life. Gallicho was third in the all-around with a 35.60 while Vessell was fourth with a 35.05.

"We have a much younger team than we had last year," Vessell said. "It is going real well. Sam (Shirmer) and I, we kind of feel like team moms. And the team is growing together very nicely."

Prospect is also growing well.

With their score of 140.60, the Knights have already posted their highest score of this season. They have also bested their top score of last year by three points.

"The girls are on cloud nine right now," Prospect coach Monica Donner said. "We are very excited with it. We have some state judges here, so the score is validated by that. The girls were hitting their routines and motivating each other."

The Knights had to get a ton of motivation when Olivia Tader scored a 9.60 on the bars. She also won the beam with a 9.30 and tied teammate Marina Andric for top honors on the vault with a 9.40.

"We have been really working hard on cleaning up our bar routines this year," said Tader, who is a junior "I have just been working hard in practice. A lot of bad routines help make up a good one."

Tader was second in the all-around with a 35.70 while Andric was fifth with a 35.00. The Knights showed their depth with strong performances from Kaiya Koyanagi, Naiya Rooks, Jillian Schmitt, Julia Cunniff and Anya Soriano.

Schaumburg was a bit short-handed due to some injuries.

"We had some ups and downs in this meet," Schaumburg coach Amber Mirski said. "We are still getting into the flow of things. We still have some injuries. We had a much fuller lineup tonight, but there were still a lot of nerves."

Alexis Rothmeyer helped take some of that sting away by winning the all-around with a 36.35.

"I did pretty good today," Rothmeyer said. "I was a little off. It took a little bit to get used to the bars and I was a little nervous out there."

Rothmeyer got help from Chali Baumann, Amelia Mazeikis, Donna-Rose Reyna, Daniella Reyna and Mallorie Page.