WEST SALEM — Practice this week may not have been what West Salem co-op gymnastics coach Carrie O’Hearn would call ideal, but her gymnasts followed it up with a memorable performance in a big night in their own gym.
The Panthers, who hadn’t competed in 17 days after a meet a week ago was canceled just before the team was supposed to board its bus, put together a season-best score of 141.4 to win the Coulee Conference championship Friday at West Salem High School.
O’Hearn said she sets up her practices based on the most recent meet — what went right, and what went wrong — and uses the practices to work on specific shortcomings they discovered. Without that, the practices were more general, but that didn’t stop the Panthers from wining the meet with its best score of the season heading into next weekend’s WIAA Division 1 sectionals.
“When you lose a meet, you kind of lose your momentum,” O’Hearn said. “Then you are just working on routines and not focusing on anything in particular.
“That made it hard this week because it was more, ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing.'”
Senior Kennedy Garbers was second all-around with a score of 35.85 to lead the Panthers, who clipped runner-up G-E-T (140.85) for the championship. Westby’s co-op placed third (133.25).
G-E-T’s Taylor Gallup won the all-around (36.925) and was the top performer on the vault (9.175), balance beam (9.575) and floor exercise (9.6).
Garbers was third on the balance beam (9.25) and tied teammate Camdyn Lyga for third on the floor exercise (9.25).
West Salem’s Layla Hirschboeck and Hayden Rohde were part of a three-way tie for second place on the bars (8.575), and Olivia Maki was second on the vault (9.15) for the Panthers. Maki was also fourth on the balance beam (9.1).
West Salem’s co-op, which also includes gymnasts from Aquinas and Bangor, will host a Division 1 sectional on March 1.
“Hopefully, they can feed off of this,” she said, “going into next week.”
