Champs Prevail in Dominating Fashion
March 11, 2017
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
CANTON – Brighton senior Courtney Casper packed an eventful final month into her only season of high school gymnastics.
An accomplished club competitor, Casper joined the Bulldogs’ team this winter – and Saturday at Plymouth High School added an MHSAA Division 1 title to league and Regional championships she’d won over the last few weeks.
Casper scored an all-around 37.975 to edge Rockford senior Nicole Coughlin by 75 hundredths of a point in the most dominant Division 1 Finals performance since Grand Ledge’s Meghan McWhorter also won all-around and three individual apparatuses in 2008.
Casper tied senior teammate Hannah Bracken to win vault (9.700), and also took first on uneven parallel bars (9.650) and floor exercise (9.775).
“It’s really exciting because it was my first year on high school, and I couldn’t have finished any better than I did,” Casper said. “It was a lot less pressure for me (than club), so it was kinda just more for fun.”
Casper tied for second, with Coughlin, at the prestigious Canton Invitational at the start of February. That meet frequently is an indicator of which gymnasts will contend for MHSAA titles a month later, and Casper managed her high standing despite falling twice that day.
She said she was most proud of her floor routine Saturday, and for good reason – her score tied for third-highest in Division 1 Finals history. Her vault score tied for 15th highest on the MHSAA Finals record book list for that event.
Coughlin, who finished fifth and third, respectively, over the previous two seasons, won balance beam with a 9.500. A day after leading Rockford to its third straight team championship, Coughlin capped her high school career with a personal-best all-around score of 37.900. The beam championship also was her second straight on that apparatus.
She and Casper finished seven tenths of a point better than the rest of the field.
“I was just really proud of our team still from (Friday), so we just tried to carry that same energy into today,” Coughlin said. “I just wanted to come in and hit all four routines, and I did, so I’m super proud of that.”
Port Huron sophomore Brianne Smith placed third, up from 12th her first season, and Grand Rapids Forest Hills United senior Christine Byam was fourth in Division 1 after taking sixth a year ago. Nicole’s twin Carly Coughlin finished fifth, and Grosse Pointe United senior Isabelle Nguyen came in sixth to go with her previous Division 1 finishes of fifth, second and second during her first three seasons of high school.
In Division 2, Farmington United junior Elisa Bills took the next step after missing out on the 2016 championship by only three tenths of a point.
Competing in part against a Farmington lineup filled with strong Division 2 teammates, Bills hadn’t finished first in an all-around competition this winter. But she got her first place when it counted most, scoring a 37.550, which tied for fifth-highest in Division 2 Finals history.
She won vault (9.575), beam (9.400) and floor (9.525). Her bars score tied for sixth and her floor score tied for 12th in Division 2 Finals history. She was the first Division 2 gymnast to win all-around and three apparatuses since Troy Athens’ Brooke Madzia in 2009.
“All the hard work paid off, throughout the whole year, just going hard and staying in the game throughout the whole day,” Bills said. “Even if there was one fall, or one bobble, you just had to keep positive throughout the whole day and go hard and give it your all.”
Bills’ all-around score would’ve placed third in Division 1 and cleared the field by 0.825 points. Howell senior Alyssa Walker (36.725) and Livonia Blue senior Jessica Weak (36.675) finished second and third all-around, respectively. Both of their scores were high enough to also make the MHSAA Finals record book for Division 2. Weak also repeated as bars champion with a score of 9.325, three tenths of a point higher than her winning score in 2016.
PHOTOS: (Top) Brighton’s Courtney Casper performs her floor routine during Saturday’s Finals at Plymouth High School. (Middle) Rockford’s Nicole Coughlin, on beam Saturday, finished second in Division 1. (Below) Farmington’s Elisa Bills also performs on floor on the way to winning the Division 2 title. (Click to see more at HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)
Consistently Strong in Every Event, Ruffing Proves Best All-Around
By
Tim Robinson
Special for MHSAA.com
March 12, 2022
WHITE LAKE TOWNSHIP — Talk about a surprise.
Morgan Ruffing of the Livonia Red co-op team knew her all-around score, and sat patiently during the awards ceremony at Saturday’s individual gymnastics championship meet at Lakeland High School.
“I was like, ‘They haven’t gotten to my score yet,’” she said. “And then they called the second-place score, and I was like, ‘There’s no way.’”
As it turned out, that was the way. Ruffing had won the Division 1 all-around title.
“I was in disbelief the whole time,” she said of her standing atop the medal stand. “I couldn’t believe this was happening.
Ruffing didn’t win an event, but finished among the top five in each of the four events to total a score of 37.525, a half-point ahead of Grand Ledge’s Alaina Yaney, who was second.
Yaney won the vault but slipped to second with a tie for eighth in the floor exercise.
Lacey Scheid of Rockford, last year’s runner-up, won the floor exercise and the balance beam, but finished well out of the top 10 in the parallel bars, which sent her to third all-around.
It was the beam where Ruffing was able to come back from a disappointing performance in Friday’s team meet when she fell attempting a wolf three-quarter turn.
“The pressure got to her,” Livonia Red coach Mandy Brown said. “It was her last event (Friday) and it came down to her routine. (Saturday), I switched it up and had her starting toward the beginning of the beam lineup so she didn’t feel as much pressure.”
A little intentional amnesia didn’t hurt, either.
“Yeah,” Ruffing said, chuckling at the use of “amnesia.” “I just wanted to focus on one event at a time. If I mess up one event, then just forget about it and go on with my next event.”
Ruffing hit the wolf three-quarter in Saturday’s individual meet. She was fourth in the vault (9.425), fifth on the bars (9.150), fourth on the beam (9.3) and second on the floor (9.65).
Consistency won the day, even if it came as a surprise to the winner.
“My goal, coming in, was top three,” Ruffing said. “I didn’t know (winning) was going to happen. I was totally caught off guard.”
Instead, she moved from third last year to a title that was a most pleasant surprise.
Yaney, who went in expecting to contend for the title, also finished fourth on bars and third on beam on the way to her runner-up all-around score.
“I was hoping for first,” she said. “But second is OK.”
All three top finishers are juniors, which could make the 2023 Finals very interesting, indeed.
Ruffing’s teammate, Avery Boyk, was the other individual event winner, taking first in the parallel bars.
In Division 2, Rockford’s Anna Tracey won the all-around with a 36.325 score while taking first on beam and second on bars.
Lydia Beaton of Grand Ledge (36.150) was second all-around, taking first on vault and floor. Howell’s Maria Petru won the Division 2 bars.
PHOTOS (Top) Livonia Red’s Morgan Ruffing performs here beam routine during Saturday’s Individual Finals at White Lake Lakeland. (Middle) Rockford’s Anna Tracey completes her floor routine. (Click for more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)