Darer Just Misses In Bid For Gym Finals

Julia Darer turned in one of the top 20 scores Friday in the vault competition at the Illinois High School Association state gymnastics meet.

But the Evanston sophomore needed a little bit more than her best to keep her season alive.

Darer was eliminated with a score of 9.30 in the preliminary competition at Palatine High School. Only the top 10 individuals advance in each event and the cutoff score was 9.375 to qualify.

Palatine’s Jolee Waddington set the qualifying pace with a top score of 9.75 on vault. The finals in vault, uneven bars, floor exercise and balance beam will be held Saturday afternoon at Palatine.

Darer definitely saved her best for last, even though she didn’t make the cut. She stuck both landings on a vault she was only attempting for the third time in actual competition, and served notice that her first trip to State won’t be her last.

“I’m elated! I don’t care what the cutoff score was today,” said Evanston head coach Mike Spevack. “Julia gets to leave here happy. She nailed that vault, and that’s what she came here to do.

“Without question those were two of her best vaults --- ever. She gets to finish the season on a high note, and I couldn’t be happier with her performance. The fact that a score of 9.3 doesn’t make the finals here just speaks volumes about how freaking good the other vaulters are here. We saw some wild stuff today. But for Julia to finish in the top 20 among some incredible vaulters is amazing.

“It’s only the third time she ever did that skill (a Yurchenko with a pike) and it would have been so easy for to cave, to think can I even do this here? But she did it.”

By luck of the draw in the rotation that featured 61 entries just in her event, Darer had to wait almost three hours from the start of the meet to the time she actually sprinted down the runway and competed. The rising sophomore was able to fight through the nerves and deliver just when it mattered most.

“I did my best, and I feel good about it,” she said. “Obviously, I would have liked to make it to the finals. I kept looking online at the scores and I was really just hoping to do my best. I spent some time with my friends from New Trier (teammates on her past and current club teams) and the wait went by a lot faster than I thought it would.”

Darer changed her vault package from a tuck to a pike for the sectional meet, figuring that the potential boost in the score could get her a trip to State. And the strategy worked when she tallied a 9.35 to advance as an at-large competitor.

But a couple of days after the sectional, she competed in a club meet (for American Academy) and went back to her original vault. She won the vault title there, then switched back to a vault with a pike for her first State competition.

“I didn’t really feel it was necessary (to use the pike) for that meet,” Darer explained. “It was my last event at the meet and I was a little tired. Everyone else was doing tucks. I just didn’t want to force it because at that point I hadn’t had a lot of practice with it. It worked out fine.

“My goal for next year is that I’m hoping to add a layout vault with a 10.0 start value. If it goes good, then I’d like to make it to the state finals. I know it will be hard.”

“I thought maybe Julia could’ve qualified for State last year,” Spevack added. “When she showed up in our gym on Day 1, it was clear that she was uniquely talented. Last year the year probably didn’t go the way she wanted it to, adjusting to so many meets in the high school season, but she made the adjustment.

“Her consistency got better, and that’s how you end up in a place like this (state finals). I’ve been coaching for quite a long time and you don’t come across many like her.”