Optimistic Geneva gymnastics earn Upstate Eight Conference crown

GENEVA – Geneva girls gymnasts absorbed the attention of the rest of their Upstate Eight Conference counterparts as Thursday’s conference meet concluded.

Each rotation had finished apart from the Vikings’ turn on the floor exercise.

Consider the extra eyeballs sound preparation for the season’s stretch run.

Geneva scored 146.7 team points to check a conference title off its lofty January-February to-do list. The score, 1.7 points short of matching a season high, topped the runner-up St. Charles co-op (138.8), third-place Batavia (134.8) and the rest of the seven-team field.

“Yeah, it was pretty exciting to do floor last,” Vikings sophomore standout Claire Ginsberg said. “That’s always an event where you can go out and have fun, and it’s a good way to end the meet.”

Ginsberg, the defending IHSA all-around state champion, won each event to earn the conference all-around title. Her 38.1 final score edged her older sister, Grace, by two points, and accumulated by virtue of victories in the vault (9.5), uneven bars (9.7), balance beam (9.45) and floor exercise (9.45).

Her all-around mark fell four-tenths of a point shy of matching her season and career high, while her bars score was a personal best.

“I was thinking that if I just came in, had a clean meet and hit everything, I’d be good,” Ginsberg said.

Geneva and the St. Charles co-op entered the night as the favorites to vie for the title, renewing a rivalry that’s taken on special sizzle this season as both programs aim to improve on separate state runs in 2013-14.

On Jan. 21, on the same Mack Olson gym apparatuses on which they competed Thursday, the Vikings edged the co-op, 148.4 to 145.95, the gymnastics equivalent of a shootout.

St. Charles coach Amy Lill pinpointed struggles on two events as the culprit. She joked they might gave her premature gray hair at age 35 considering how much the team has worked on them, but also was optimistic about recovering for the looming state series.

“We had a lot of mistakes on bars and beam,” Lill said. “I just have to figure out how to pull those events together.”

Emma Grace Redmond-Mattucci finished third in the all-around with a 34.75., 0.2 points better than Batavia’s top all-arounder, fifth-place Megan McGee.

The schools both had one other all-arounder in the top 10: Batavia’s Cameron Hindel (eighth, 33.95) and St. Charles’ Raquel Favia (ninth, 33.7).

“We’ve progressed a ton this year,” Bulldogs coach Taryn Boyce said. “We’re kind of where we want to be right now. ... Hopefully we can hit our routines and keep that up. We did have a few falls and missed connections.”

From here, the Tri-Cities teams will disperse to separate IHSA regionals next week. Batavia travels to Wheaton Warrenville South on Tuesday, Geneva hosts its own competition on Wednesday and the St. Charles co-op competes at York on Thursday.

Each regional serves as a feeder to the Glenbard North Sectional on Feb. 10. Regional-winning teams automatically advance to sectionals, along with two at-large teams within the sectional complex who compile the best scores among non-champions.

Individual advancement to sectionals progresses similarly. The top five finishers in each event and the all-around earn sessional spots, with the next 12-best athletes from the sectional complex moving on as at-large entries.

Geneva will be two weeks removed from its earlier breakthrough night against the co-op when it hosts regionals. The Vikings will again look to harness their seasonlong progress and a recent stretch predicated on adding new skills through the time-honored practice of repetition.