Mount Si Gymnasts take big win against Eastlake; look ahead to post season

By Evan Pappas • January 22, 2018 4:46 pm

The Mount Si gymnastics team took their fifth win of the season in their match against Eastlake on Mount Si’s Senior Night, Thursday, Jan. 18.

Mount Si won 165 to 134, putting them at five wins and two losses for the season. They are now ranked third in the league, only behind North Creek and Woodinville.

Head Coach Kelly Loranger said she was happy with how the match went, despite some routines not going as well as the gymnasts wanted.

“The match went really well, it was nice to end senior night on a high note,” she said. “The routines didn’t completely go as planned, but it’s still where we want to be.”

Loranger said that some of the newer, more challenging routines still needed work, but the team’s overall performance was good and the match helped get them back on track after the holiday break.

“I feel like this season has its ups and down,” she said. “Each meet we progressively get better and better and better, around Christmas break everyone got hit with the flu, we all backtracked, it took some time to build back up and get back to where we were last night.”

Despite a big win against Eastlake, Loranger said the team still felt a lot of pressure during the match due to the other two 3A conference teams, Lake Washington and Sammamish High School, also having their match in the Mount Si gym at the same time. Both those teams were undefeated at that point so the Mount Si squad was still feeling the competitive spirit, she said.

With only one match left against Bothell on Saturday, Jan. 27, Loranger is feeling good about the team’s performance and their prospects for the post-season.

“It was nice to see them get back into the swing of things, getting back to where they had started and even further along, they are progressing for post-season,” she said. “It was fun to see the support, for senior night there was a ton of people supporting the seniors, and future gymnasts, eighth graders excited to do high school gymnastics.”

Loranger explained that in all, nine 4A teams will compete in the post-season and the top four will go to the district competition. From there, the top two at districts, as well as qualifying individuals from other teams, go to the state competition.

“For us we are sitting in third, the chances of going to state as a team are less likely, but we have a chance from districts to make it to state as individuals,” she said. “We’ve got one more meet to try out all the new skills, see how they score, that determines how they are going to perform post season.”