The Cheney High School gymnastics kicked of its season on Dec. 6 at Ferris High School. This marks the third season for the program after returning from a 20 year hiatus. The team is lead with first-year head coach Jamie Frucci, who was the assistant coach last year and was named the Greater Spokane League (GSL) assistant coach of the year after her help last season.
The Blackhawks competed against the host, Central Valley, University and Mead. Cheney took fourth place with 143.950 points. After this tournament, Cheney was sitting at 1-3 overall on the season.
“ Overall Cheney had a great first meet,” Frucci said in an email. “We had a small number of athletes eligible to compete the first meet and they all stepped up and did a great job. We had many small errors that were not unexpected considering it was the first meet of the season. We will work on correcting those small errors to become more consistent and clean up routines and we should see even better scores in the future.”
Central Valley took first place with 152.625 points. Right behind them was Mt. Spokane (147.050), University (144.550) and Ferris in last place with 120.100.
Cheney had multiple top-10 results throughout the contest. Sophia VanWormer highlighted the meet by taking first place in the bars, totaling 8.75 points. VanWormer also took seventh in the vault with 8.20 points and fifth in the beam, collecting another 8.35.
Alexis Miller also had multiple top-10 finishes with taking fourth in the bars and collecting 7.95 points along with a ninth place finish in the beam with 7.80 points.
Laia Vidal was the other Blackhawk to place, taking sixth in the beam to collect 8.25 points for the team.
“ Sophia VanWormer, Alexis Miller, and Kyli Mayhew all overcame great challenges to complete the routines they competed on bars and beam,” Frucci said. “The routines they completed were as hard or harder than the routines they ended the season with last year and their scores on these events played a huge role in our team score. Laia Vidal also completed one of the cleanest beam routines I have seen in a long time. Laia’s scores also played a big role in our team score.”
Cheney continued its competition on Wednesday, Dec. 13, at Rogers High School. The team competed against the host, Lewis and Clark, Central Valley and Mead.
“We have a great group of girls on our team this year all very positive and supportive of each other,” Frucci said. “ We are looking forward to our next meet where we will get to compete on a spring floor and not wrestling mats for floor competition which will allow for harder tumbling to be competed leading to higher floor scores.”
The first meet that the Blackhawks will host is on Jan. 4 at the Mead Gym Center at 12509 North Market Street.
Grace Pohl can be reached at [email protected].
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