As their season comes to an end, the girls gymnastics team will compete in both conference and sectionals in late February. 

“We’ve had more meets in the front half of the season, which is good because it gets the girls ready for competition throughout the rest of the season,” said Samantha Sullivan, head coach.

The team participates in both invitational meets, which are competitions with more than one school, and dual meets, which happen between two teams only. 

“Most of [the meets] are usually far away and we begin warm ups right away, which usually takes a while, almost an hour, and then we start going through each event,” said Fae Kruokowski, co-captain. “Each team goes through rounds depending on how many teams there are. We go through each of them until we’re done and we have awards at the end.”

The team, though thankful for the equipment available to them, is disappointed to have to travel for all meets.

“We’re very happy to have this space to use, but it can be difficult when you’re always traveling to go to meets because you can’t host in your home gym,” Sullivan said. “For example, our floor goes wall to wall and our vault is right up against the wall, so it’s not technically regulation size.”

In addition to a few requirement changes for the gymnastics guidelines, the team also had a larger group for the season.

We’ve gotten two freshmen and some gymnasts who have come back who weren’t really here last year, so we got more girls than we were expecting this year,”

Many of the gymnasts believe that the amount of  new members has added to the close knit community and team bonding.

“We have karaoke parties on the bus rides home, things like that,” said Eloise Bejma, co-captain, “I feel like this year is definitely more special than the previous years.”

However, Bejma believes that her position on the team is not an extremely stressful one. 

 “We encourage people to learn new things,”Bejma said. “I feel like getting people to know each other and planning things outside of gymnastics as well as practices is a big role,”

The team had many goals for this season, both for individual members and the group as a whole.

“The team goal is we would really like to score in the one tens and above,” Sullivan said. “Also, getting girls who have not done [other events] to do those. They’re capable of it, but just putting it together and competing [those skills] at meets.”

Sullivan believes the hardest part of gymnastics is getting through mental barriers.

“In gymnastics you have to do things hundreds, if not thousands of times to get some of the skills,” Sullivan said. “It’s tough, but it’s really cool and rewarding once you actually get the skills.”