United, Farmington Vaults to Team Title
March 9, 2018
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
ROCKFORD – Farmington Unified gymnastics coach Jeff Dwyer knows what a championship team looks like.
And he had a feeling he saw one before Friday’s MHSAA Team Final at Rockford High School.
The calm. The energy to compete. The singing.
The gymnastics championship meet often comes down to the smallest of margins, and this time the top three teams were separated by a mere three tenths of a point.
Farmington United was just a few tenths better than the rest, scoring 144.750 to edge Northville and Rockford for a first MHSAA title in this sport since 2006.
“We are such a team, and we are so strong together,” Farmington United senior Elisa Bills said. “No matter what other teams are doing, no matter what high score we see, we forget about it and keep going and continue to the next event.
“It didn’t matter if someone fell or hit. It didn’t matter, because as a team, we were happy. And we just put everything out there and did our best.”
Farmington United – made up this season of athletes from Farmington and North Farmington – was followed by Northville at 144.550 and Rockford at 144.450. Northville’s finish was its highest since coming in runner-up as part of a co-op team with Novi in 2002. Rockford’s finish similarly was impressive – the Rams were competing for their fourth straight MHSAA Finals championship, but doing so without a senior and with only three juniors taking the mat.
Farmington United had a bit more experience, starting with Bills, the reigning Division 2 individual champion who will compete for a repeat title Saturday. One of two seniors on her team, Bills posted the highest all-around score of Friday’s competition, 36.700. Junior Kacey Noseworthy had the day’s fourth-highest all-around at 36.450, and senior Emily Stecevic also came up big with a 34.950.
As a team, Farmington United didn’t place first on any of the four apparatus – but came in second on bars, beam and floor. Juniors Shelby Smith and Ava Farquhar, sophomore Lily Tyler and freshman Sydney Schultz also contributed scores.
“This just kinda floored me because these are not easy to win. I don’t even know if they know what they just did,” said Dwyer, who has led the program since 1986 and guided it to three straight titles from 2004-06 and runner-up finishes in 2008 and 2010.
“There’s teams – like I was looking at them at Regionals and earlier today – I didn’t have to do a lot of coaching. They were the ones with game faces on, so I felt good about that. Some years you’ve gotta just get them on – ‘Hey we’re at the state meet, at the Regional meet’ – and I told them before this meet, if I had to bet on a team to have a chance to win it, I’m going to bet with you guys.”
That might not have seemed like the best idea even a few weeks ago. Bills missed much of the second half of the regular season with a knee injury and didn’t return full strength until the Regional a week ago.
Her teammates picked up the slack, including finishing first Jan. 31 at the Canton Invitational without her against a field including many of the state’s top teams.
Coming back from the injury admittedly was the “scariest thing ever” for Bills. But there’s no way she would’ve missed this. “Coming back and winning this title was the best thing – all I wanted to do,” she said.
Meanwhile, there was little disappointment as Northville gymnasts took photos with their runner-up trophy Friday night. The Mustangs had improved from ninth in 2017, and cut the margin against Farmington significantly after finishing nearly four points behind Bills and her teammates at last week’s Regional.
Senior Erin McCallum and sophomore Maria Scavnicky competed all-around, posting scores of 36.550 and 35.325, respectively. As a team, Northville posted the highest scores on both bars and beam.
“Since the very beginning, this is what we’ve wanted to do,” said McCallum, whose all-around score was the day’s third highest. “Even if things didn’t go our way, we just kept pushing.
“(From the start this season) I could just tell – people wanted to be here, they wanted to work hard and they wanted to do this.”
Rockford finished first as a team on floor, and Brighton was first on beam. Livonia Blue, Brighton, Plymouth and Howell all cleared 140 points to follow the top three in that order, respectively.
Rockford junior Reagan Ammon (36.675), Howell sophomore Taylor Gillespie (36.350), Brighton senior Sarah Mosset (36.275) and Livonia Blue freshman Kenna Fedrigo (36.050) also broke 36 points all-around.
Individual competition in both divisions begins at noon Saturday at Rockford.
Click for full Team Finals results.
PHOTOS: (Top) Farmington United begins celebrating after hearing it has won its first MHSAA team championship since 2006. (Middle) Farmington United's Kacey Noseworthy performs her bars routine. (Below) Rockford's Morgan Case works toward her 9.4 on floor exercise. (Click for more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)
Rebuilt Rockford Completes 3-Peat Run
March 10, 2017
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
CANTON – That Rockford’s gymnastics team began this season in rebuilding mode was hard to fathom as the Rams raised a third straight MHSAA championship trophy Friday night at Plymouth High School.
But this latest celebration was as much a testament to how far they’d come as to what they accomplished again this season.
Rockford entered this winter minus a trio of Division 1 standouts who helped turn the team into a powerhouse the last few seasons but graduated last spring.
On Friday, the Rams had only senior sisters Nicole and Carly Coughlin compete on all four apparatuses, but received scores from six gymnasts as eight competed in at least one event. That team effort was enough to land Rockford 0.525 of a point clear of runner-up Canton with a winning score of 145.300.
“We lost a lot of our good seniors last year, and we had a ton of good freshmen coming in, so we didn’t really know what to expect,” Nicole Coughlin said. “But I’m so happy with what we did today. We had to work a ton for it this year; the other two years we had strong seniors, we knew we were contenders for it. But really we had to build up from really nothing this year.”
Just two seasons ago, the Coughlins and teammate Kaitie Killinger were sophomores contributing to a Rockford/Sparta co-op team looking to win the program’s first championship since 1989.
Rockford on Friday became the fourth Lower Peninsula team since the beginning of MHSAA Finals in the sport in 1972 to win at least three straight championships, joining Ludington from 1975-79, Holland from 1994-97, Tri-Farmington from 2004-06 and Grand Ledge from 2008-13.
Nicole Coughlin’s 37.250 all-around score Friday ranked third at the meet, and Carly ranked fifth with a 36.725. Killinger and freshmen Morgan Case and Ashley Faulkner all posted scores of 9.0 or higher on at least one apparatus, and sophomore Chantel Lokers also contributed a score tying for the team’s fourth-best on bars.
Only a month ago, the Rams were searching for consistency, disappointed after a close win over a local rival that served as a wake-up call. Practices became more focused, technique more crisp and daily performances more consistent.
Rockford posted the state’s top Regional score of 147.800 last weekend.
“We had a strong team from the beginning, but we have slowly built all season long and we just happened to peak at the right time,” Rockford coach Alyssa Burke said. “They had a lot of pressure on them this year. From the first meet, it was constant ‘Oh, are they going to three-peat?’ We just told them we’re a different team this year, we’re a rebuilding team, and we’re going to go and do our best every meet and hopefully slowly build and get better all season – and hopefully three-peat, and if we don’t still have a great season.
“We really did all we could. Whether we won or lost, we were just proud that we’d done our best.”
Annual contender Canton pushed the Rams as far as possible, however. After both had finished beam, floor and vault, the Chiefs trailed by 2.325 points. Rockford went first on bars and scored 34.850. But although Canton posted the day’s highest bars score of 35.725, it wasn’t enough to make up the entire deficit.
Rockford’s floor (37.525) and vault (36.900) were the highest scoring of the meet.
But Canton couldn’t be disappointed. After finishing first or second every season from 2011-15, the Chiefs slid to fifth at last season’s Final.
“Our mantra this week was, ‘Girls, can you win?’ And last year it was, ‘Well, I don’t know’ and they ended up fifth just because they didn’t have the attitude,” Canton coach John Cunningham said. “This year, they went, ‘Well, maybe we could win.’ Well, (our coaches) have said all along, you guys could be state champs. Give or take six tenths … we could definitely be state champs.”
Senior Jana Hilditch posted the seventh highest all-around score of 36.425 for Canton, and teammates Kelsea Kernosek (35.725) and Victoria Faber (35.550) also competed all-around for the Chiefs.
Grand Rapids Forest Hills senior Christine Byam totaled the day’s highest all-around score of 37.500 as her team finished sixth. Senior Courtney Casper had the second-highest all-around (37.450) in leading Brighton to a third-place finish, up from 11th last season and its best since also finishing third in 2005.
PHOTOS: (Top) Rockford coach Alyssa Burke (right) embraces one of her gymnasts after the team's final rotation Friday. (Middle) A Rams gymnast performs on bars. (Below) A Canton gymnast performs her beam routine. (Click to see more at HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)