Madison Gymnasts Make It To The Podium!

After a slow start and a few mistakes, the Daniel Hand High School Gymnastics Team finished strong to place second in state competition recently. 

Coach Kelly C. Smith said the girls were happy about the results this year after last year's fourth place finish.

"Overall, we're really pleased and the girls were excited to be on the podium," Smith said. "We had a slow start on bars and made some mistakes that didn't put us in a very good position. We regrouped, and had our best meet of the season on our next event, beam. Our lowest score was a great score of an 8.45 and it went up from there."

Smith said the team continued to do well on vault and floor for an impressive overall team score over a 140.

"So we placed higher than our ranking (3rd) and scored higher than our season average (139.417) which is great! We're so proud of how the girls battled back from their rough start," Smith said.

Smith said the team also had the third highest score out of all the divisions (S, M and L).

"As part of the top four overall we will compete as a team again next weekend at state opens," Smith said. The top two teams at opens will compete in the New England championships.

In addition to the team honors, the DHHS team has several individual competitors who qualified to win individual accolades at opens:

• Senior Captain Kimmy Megargee on all four events and AA
• Sophomore Stefani Taschner on vault and bars
• Sophomore Kendall Jerzyk on floor and bar
• Senior Captain Maia Smith on beam

"Also, Kimmy, Kendall and Stefani were named first team All State and Maia was named second team all state. This is determined by individual season averages on the events." Smith said.

For more information on the results in the state competition, you can check out the CASCIAC website at: http://www.casciac.org/gym12m.shtml

For more information on the opens, go here: http://www.casciac.org/gym12o.shtml