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Weems leads Geneva to regional title

Graci Weems had a memorable postseason debut on Thursday night to lead the Geneva girls gymnastics team to the Geneva regional title.

The Vikings sophomore had her best meet of the year, taking second in the all-around and winning beam and floor as Geneva sailed to 139.625 points.

Leyden was second (128.6) and followed by Glenbard North (122.925) and Glenbard South (113.4).

"I felt really good about how I performed and how the rest of my team performed," Weems said. "It was really exciting, especially being a postseason meet, which was more stressful because you don't know if there is going to be another meet after this one."

Indeed there will be another one as Geneva advances to next Thursday's Glenbard West sectional.

Junior Maura Anderson and senior Kate Nitschke were the lone Geneva gymnasts who entered this meet with postseason experience from the Glenbard West regional two years ago.

Anderson took fourth on beam with an 8.625 and fifth on floor with a 9 while Nitschke, who served in a specialist role in 2020, was fifth in the all-around with a 34.05.

"It's really fun going into postseason knowing that we can have a strong outcome," Anderson said. "Regionals are a big deal. There's nothing guaranteed so I told them to go out there and have fun and do what we know what to do and it turned out great. We're going on to sectionals."

Leyden junior Sefora Hanc won the vault with a 9.275 and bars with a 9 while earning all-around regional champ honors with a 36.1.

Weems hasn't reached a 36 yet, but she sniffed it with a 35.925. She scored a 35.025 last Friday in the DuKane Conference meet.

"It felts really good to win both (beam and floor) since I've made a lot of changes to them," she said. "I was able to finally show what I can do on those. At conference I fell twice on beam so it was nice to bounce back at regionals."

Weems scored a 9.125 on beam, a vast improvement over her 8.2 at conference.

Geneva freshman Emma Wiedenhoeft contributed key scores on bars and vault and sophomore Maeve Devlin put on a show in her lone event, taking second to only Weems' 9.35 on floor with a 9.1.

"They did really well under the pressure they were in," Vikings coach Kim Hostman said. "Having all these new kids and not having experienced this to come in and do so well and support each other, I'm super proud of them. They did what they were supposed to do and did very well."

Geneva won its first regional title since 2017. That was 2014 state all-around champion Claire Rose Ginsberg's final season and also the last time the Vikings played host at their Mack Olson gym.

"I think they're peaking at the right time so that's a plus, and their confidence is building so they're doing really well," Hostman said. "We still haven't hit a perfect meet so we're looking for that, but we're pretty close."

Glenbard North junior Brooklyn McQuillan took third on beam, floor and vault so it makes perfect sense that she was third in the all-around with a 35.7, improving .225 from conference. She also was fourth on bars.

"I stayed pretty consistent," she said. "I had a little bit of a shaky bar routine, but I was able to upgrade my dismount so it was really exciting to compete that for the first time at regionals. Overall I'm really happy. It was a fun meet and I had a lot of fun."

Junior Brooke Poltrock was sixth in the all-around for the Panthers with a 32.575.

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