Escanaba Vaulting Into Regional off Program-Record Team Score
By
John Vrancic
Special for MHSAA.com
March 4, 2022
ESCANABA — The Escanaba gymnasts are enjoying a record-breaking season as they head into MHSAA Tournament competition.
The team has turned in five school scoring records, with its most recent at Negaunee on Feb. 21 in earning the Great Northern Conference title with 135.05 points.
They’re looking forward to the Regional meet Saturday at Rockford.
“Before the season I couldn’t even imagine getting scores that high,” said sophomore Sophia Wagner, who won vault with a perfect 9.4 score Dec. 7 in a dual meet at Negaunee. “Our team scores have been above 120 points all year. We all push each other to get better. I think qualifying for the Regionals as a team was our biggest highlight. Getting that done early gave us more time to work on new skills. This has been an exciting season.”
All this has taken place during a year in which Escanaba gymnastics is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
“The girls are driving each other to get better in every practice,” said coach Theresa Pascoe. “When you can practice every day on a spring floor (at Triple A Gymnastics), it makes you want to get better. What’s making our team so much stronger is having newer equipment. You can only go so far on older equipment.
“It seems like the girls want to practice all the time. One time I gave them a day off and they all showed up. They want to do all the things the girls do downstate. If the girls want to do more, that’s my motivation to be here.”
They achieved their previous best score while winning their own invitational Feb. 5 with 134.1 points.
“That’s a great feeling,” said senior Lizzy Sliva, whose personal-best score in vault is 9.3. “It’s a lot of fun being on this team. We were able to qualify for the Team Regionals within our first four meets which is important because there’s a lot of stress at first. Once we did that, I was able to focus on getting my routines cleaner and adding difficulty. I want to keep challenging myself in all four events.”
In their previous outing, the Eskymos were runners-up at the Vassar Invitational on Feb. 19.
On Jan. 29, they placed sixth among 10 teams in the Antigo, Wis., Invitational, which is among the oldest meets in the region.
“That was a big accomplishment,” said Sliva. “Valders (Wis.) Invitational is similar to Antigo. Valders and Coldwater (Invitationals) are fun meets. The competition downstate is just as good as in Wisconsin. It’s a lot of fun going down there and competing on a spring floor.
Senior Caitlyn Davenport had similar thoughts.
“This season has really been exciting,” she said. “I’m proud to be part of this team. This has definitely been our best season. Everybody has come together and been helping each other. Qualifying for the Team Regional has taken a lot of the pressure off. It feels like we’ve been making a lot of progress. I’ve been at a lot of open gyms and done weight training during the offseason. I think we’re pretty close with the teams in Wisconsin, and going downstate has definitely gotten us more experience.”
Escanaba’s score at the GNC meet was nearly eight points better than last year’s highest (127.1).
“This has been a great year,” said sophomore Bridget Bichler. “We have a real strong team. We’ve made a real big jump from last year. When we broke 130, it was real exciting. It was a great confidence builder, and to be able to get high scores downstate is real encouraging. We got a compliment from one judge in Coldwater who told us how impressed he was with our team. It’s a great feeling.”
The gymnasts also gained experience from other venues, according to Pascoe.
“Five of our girls have competed in age group programs in USA Gymnastics,” she said. “Several are doing kips on beam, which is something that doesn’t happen very often. For so many years we had been near the bottom in Wisconsin meets. Now we’re holding our own. We have a very small team in numbers (eight), but most of the girls have been in gymnastics nearly all their lives. We have a lot of experience.”
Freshman Sophie Lehto said she has noticed a major change from the younger levels.
“This has been a great learning experience,” she said. “We’ve been working on a lot more skills and more difficult skills. There’s a lot more development, and the competition is very different. It was a significant step.”
John Vrancic has covered high school sports in the Upper Peninsula since joining the Escanaba Daily Press staff in 1985. He is known most prominently across the peninsula for his extensive coverage of cross country and track & field that frequently appears in newspapers from the Wisconsin border to Lake Huron. He received the James Trethewey Award for Distinguished Service in 2015 from the Upper Peninsula Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association.
PHOTOS (Top) Escanaba celebrates its Great Northern Conference team gymnastics championship last month. (Middle) Caitlyn Davenport competes on balance beam during an early February meet with Negaunee. (Top photo courtesy of Escanaba gymnastics, middle courtesy of the Escanaba Daily Press.)
Rockford Golden Again in Regrouping, Rebounding to Repeat as Finals Champ
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
March 10, 2023
WHITE LAKE – Rockford gymnastics coach Michelle Ankney said a little regrouping was in order, even for her experienced and championship-tested squad.
In its third rotation at the MHSAA Team Gymnastics Final on Friday, the Rams were uncharacteristically off on the bars and ended up finishing with the sixth-best score in that event.
At that point, Ankney tried to employ a pet-themed motivational tactic to get her team’s spirits up again.
“We did have to take a break,” she said. “We’ve been talking about if you are a goldfish, you only have an 8-second memory. We had to get out our anger and pretend to be a goldfish and head to beam. We did a little pep talk, we did a little cheering and we stepped up the best we could.”
Rockford responded in its final event, earning the best score of any team on the beam. Coupled with first-place scores in the vault and floor exercise as well, it was enough to balance the poor finish on bars and lift the Rams to their second-straight Finals championship.
They finished with an overall score of 144.500, ahead of runner-up Jackson Area’s total of 142.400.
Farmington United was third at 141.325, Hartland took fourth at 140.475, while Livonia Red rounded out the top five with a score of 140.350.
This year’s title might have been a little different for Rockford than last year’s in that the Rams were the prohibitive favorites, but Ankney said the thrill of victory was the same.
“It’s still the surprise of ‘we did it,’” she said. “We came out strong, and then bars was a little bit of a disappointment. We try not to check scores, and we try not to watch. When we get to (the end), it’s a 100-percent surprise what happened.”
Rockford ended up taking first on the vault with a score of 36.300, first in the floor exercise with a 37.625 and first on the beam with a score of 36.250.
The championship was Rockford’s fifth since 2015.
“We definitely had a bull’s eye on our back,” Ankney said. “We just have been training hard, and we came in saying we need to do Rockford gymnastics. We didn’t need to do anything beyond what we already do. We just needed to come in, hit, do our thing and hope for the best. It worked.”
As was the case at their Regional meet, right behind Rockford was Jackson, the 2021 Finals champion which rebounded from an eighth-place finish last year.
Despite the disappointment of last year, Jackson head coach Marcy Miller said it wasn’t really a source of motivation for this year’s meet.
“Our girls just go out there and do the best they can,” Miller said. “They honestly don’t put a lot of thought in the other team or places. Their goal is to just do the best they can that day.”
Jackson didn’t place first in any event, but took second in the bars with a score of 35.150 and tied for second in the floor exercise with a score of 37.375.
The only team besides Rockford to earn a first on an apparatus was Salem, which was best on the bars with a score of 35.350 and second in the vault with a score of 35.600.
But an 11th-place finish on the beam and a tie for sixth in the floor exercise hurt the Rocks, and resulted in a sixth-place finish overall.
A total of 26 gymnasts competed on all four apparatus for their teams, and three reached 37-point all-around scores – Grand Ledge’s Alaina Yaney (37.475), Livonia Red’s Morgan Ruffing (37.450) and Rockford’s Lacey Scheid (37.000). Hailey Hill (35.675) also competed all-around for Rockford, which had eight gymnasts in at least one event. Alyssa Budd led Jackson Area at 36.800, and Jenna Bradley scored a 36.150.
PHOTOS (Top) A Rockford gymnast competes in floor exercise during Friday’s MHSAA Team Final. (Middle) Jackson Area’s Addi Richmond dismounts near the conclusion of her beam routine. (Click for more from High School Sports Scene.)