Published: Dec. 9, 2014
Shining at right time
East takes 2nd in season’s first meet
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News
West Bend East gymnastics coach Haley Ransom often tugs at
her hair or stresses out in practice when she watches sophomore Zoey Roberts.
Flip on the spotlight and things change for some reason.
That’s when Ransom is glad to have Roberts on the squad.
On Saturday, in the third annual West Bend East Gymnastics
Invitational, Roberts finished second, fourth and eighth in her three events,
which helped East take second at the meet.
Roberts, a junior, was second on balance beam with an 8.35,
fourth on vault with an 8.450 and eighth on floor exercise with a 7.9. And on
floor, she struggled with the routine, which would’ve gotten her an additional
0.5 points. Had she done that, Roberts would’ve finished fourth.
“I was nervous all week for it because the first meet always
makes me nervous,” Roberts said.
Cedarburg/Grafton took first in the meet with a team score
of 128.075. East was second with a 126.15. Manitowoc Lincoln was third with a
122.225, followed by Watertown (122.175), Port Washington (121.125) and Oconomowoc
(107.5).
East had the highest team score on beam (31.225) and floor
(31.9).
“(On) beam, I was having trouble in practice all week,”
Roberts said. “I’m very happy to say it went well.”
Ransom was happy too.
“She pulls things out that don’t look as good in practice,”
Ransom said. “I love watching her at meets. I’m really proud of what she did
today.”
Why things go this way for Roberts, Ransom doesn’t fully
know.
“But she always shows up to a meet with a different
attitude,” she said. “I think she just loves the competition.”
At least it’s not the other way around, Ransom joked.
“I totally prefer it this way,” she said. “But it’s weird as
a coach because you tell them what they should compete in based on what you see
in practice. Sometimes those decisions are really difficult.” How excited was
East for its score? Very.
“It’s a solid start, especially with everything that went
wrong today,” Ransom said. “It’s going to be easy for us to improve that, which
is a good thing.”
The goal this year for the Suns is to eclipse the school
record in the all-around, which is 134.475.
Scoring a 126 is a six-point improvement from last year’s
meet. At that time, Ransom was excited for that score.
“And we took second and that’s awesome,” Ransom said, adding
the Suns’ score topped Watertown, the defending Wisconsin Little Ten Conference
champion, and Oconomowoc.
“Placing above them was awesome — really, really cool to
see,” she said. “Hopefully, we can keep running with that. There’s going to be
a lot of improvement for the year.”
As expected, it was an up-and-down meet for a lot of the
gymnasts and not just East.
It was the first meet of the season and in a lot of cases,
the scores reflected it. Only one 9.0 was issued — Cedarburg/ Grafton’s Maddie
Gleed on vault (9.0).
East’s Brandi Kreger finished fourth on floor (8.3) and
second on uneven bars (8.275). It was the event in-between that appeared to
rattle the junior.
Still working through a sore toe, Ransom and Kreger decided
to scale back her vault routine for the Yurchenko, an event with a start value
of around 9.5. Instead she went with a half-full and both times she fell on her
dismount.
After the second vault, she sat next to the runaway and
buried her face in her arms. Ransom walked over to console her.
Kreger managed to collect herself and pick up an admirable
score on bars.
“She needed a confidence booster going into beam because if
she still went into beam upset, beam’s not an event you want to have high
emotions on,” Ransom said. “You have to go in there confident and focused.”
On beam, she had one fall, which slipped her score to a
7.675.
Storey Forster, another gymnast with a high start-value
vault this season, also had to scale back her vault for the time being. Forster
had an 8.1 on vault.
“I know going forward, especially getting into the January
meets, those two will both be flipping vaults,” Ransom said.
Kreger finished fifth in the allaround (32.1). “I’m not
worried,” Ransom said.
No comments:
Post a Comment