high school guymnastics
For the next two weeks, the two top gymnastics teams in the Greater Spokane League will be focusing the bars.
Mead, which rolled through the regular season undefeated, won the league title at the all-league meet Saturday on the Panthers’ home floor, overcoming the loss of senior captain Tonya Turner, the team’s top performer on the uneven parallel bars, to edge University by the tightest of margins: .225 of one point – 186.2-185.975. Central Valley was third at 158.445.
Under a revised state tournament structure, each GSL team will now take two weeks off before the Eastern Regional tournament Feb. 9 at Southridge High in Kennewick.
“The key for us was the bars,” said Mead’s Ashley Dotson, the meet’s all-around winner. “Not having Tonya there really hurts, but everyone picked it up and we had a good routine. Once we got through bars we were able to relax and have a good beam routine.”
Mead coach Amanda Workman said it was tough without Turner, who has a strained abdominal muscle.
“But this way we can get her back for regionals,” she said. “I’m happy for both Tonya and Ashley. They’ve both been All-GSL gymnasts for three years and league champions for three years. I’m glad they could finish their career as league champions.”
Dotson was the top scorer on both the vault and bars and was second on the balance beam behind sophomore teammate Taylor Gray (9.250). Dotson finished with a total score of 36.125 points. All-around runner-up, University’s Tabitha Ward, finished with 35.325. Central Valley’s Maria Alderman was third at 34.040.
The Panthers won both the bars and beam – outscoring U-Hi, their nearest competitor, by two full points on the balance beam. The Titans won both the vault and floor exercise.
“We bombed on the bars,” University coach Tracy Duncan said. “We figure we left seven points on the bars by kids making mistakes. You can’t do that in a meet like this.”
The Titans made up ground on the floor exercise, outscoring Mead by almost three points and owned the top four scores. Senior Monica Marmolejo won the event with a score of 9.525. Freshman Courtney Gilbert was tied with Alderman for second at 9.475. Junior Taylor Vold was tied the North Central’s Ali Reid for third at 9.450 and Ward was fourth at 9.425.
With the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association’s realignment, the balance of state gymnastics power shifted this year from Class 4A to Class 3A. The latter state meet is expected to be significantly bigger when the top teams meet in Tacoma next month.
As a result, there will be only one team and one all-around berth up for grabs in two weeks at the Class 4A Regional, with three individual slots open per event.
That means a lot of broken hearts among the league’s best.
“We know what we need to do to win in two weeks: We need to hit the bars hard and find out if the girls can handle the routines they’re working on now or if we need to take some things out,” Duncan said. “All I know is we’re not leaving any kids on this team behind when it comes time to go to state. We did that the first year we were here and it’s too hard to leave kids home.”
The unexpected downtime at the end of the season, two weeks off from competition heading into regionals, is a mixed blessing.
“It will allow us to heal up because we do have some girls hurt right now,” Dotson said. “But it does feel strange not having another meet coming up in just a few days.”
“The key for us will be keeping kids performing at the level they’re at on the floor exercise while we try to bring up our bars score,” Duncan said. “We’re not going to have a lot of time to work on floor exercise these next couple weeks.”