Dukes defeat Lyons Township in conference play.
By Mike Miazga
Correspondent
The York girls gymnastics team enjoyed some success recently at a pair of invitationals.
The Dukes took sixth at the Hinsdale South invitational with a score of 123.5 and then went up to 124.5 during a seventh-place finish at the Hersey invitational.
Between the two meets, Sarah Mapes was seventh on beam and Megan Cronin took eighth on bars at the Hinsdale South event and Jessica Dryden took seventh on vault at Hersey.
In dual meets, the Dukes defeated Lyons Township and lost to Hinsdale Central and Oak Park-River Forest—all were West Suburban Conference Silver Division meets.
Cronin, a sophomore, is York’s top returning gymnast who competes all-around where her top events are floor and bars.
Key newcomers for York include freshmen Lailah Waddel (all-around) and Haylee Williams. Williams currently is working her way back from injury.
Through late last week, Dryden had the team’s top score on vault with a 9.15, while Cronin had a 9.0 on floor.
“Right now, the team is doing an amazing job of being positive, flexible and trusting the system I’m attempting to create,” said York coach Anthony Colant. “The girls really have been incredibly understanding when I pull certain girls from events and give others a chance at competing or to make some changes to their routines that they may not have thought of otherwise.”
Colant also talked about the team’s improved practice sessions. “We also made a slight change to our practice format which they have adapted to nicely, too,” he said. “We used to coach by level with the varsity girls working with me every day and the JV girls working with coach Criel, but this year we switched to me coaching bars and vault with all levels and Criel working with beam and floor on all levels because, quite frankly, he’s a better floor coach than I am. While sometimes it’s hard to get used to two different coaches or to see ‘your’ coach working with first years instead of you. None of the girls have voiced any complaints.”
Colant said the team also has improved in the sportsmanship department, but not in the sense of going from negative to positive.
“We have definitely improved in overall sportsmanship the most,” he said. “Not that the girls were ever blatantly disrespectful, but the team in general had to be taught some of the appropriate ways to behave during meets, such as not being too loud when other teams are competing. They have done an excellent job turning that around. They also are much more motivated inside the gym during practice and can almost always be seen working hard on one skill or another even if they have to set up drills themselves because we only have two coaches for almost 40 girls.”
On the competition floor, Colant said the team’s current greatest strength is on vault. “We definitely are strongest on vault right now,” he said, noting the team notched a 35 score in the event in recent times. We have two girls throwing consistent handspring fulls, one throwing a beautiful tucked tsuk who usually scores above a 9 for us and then one piked tsuk that is still a little inconsistent but is a big hot for us when she lands.”
Bars, the coach said, remains a work in progress. “We still have the most room for improvement on bars, though really that should be our strongest event but our routines are really inconsistent right now and there are a few girls who had big skills such as double backs and bails last year who still are trying to get those skills back from their off-season. I am hoping after another week or two of practice our scores will go up by around two points on bars alone once these routines are more consistent and these skills are back into their routines.”
Individually, Colant said freshman Waddel has made big strides thus far. “Our freshman Lailah Waddel has really stepped up this year as a new member of the team both by constantly being positive and flexible, fulfilling whatever rolls the team needs from her that week and by being an excellent role model in the gym. She always is looking out for her teammates and working hard whenever she can.”
York recently competed in the Palatine invitational.
