Gymnasts Win First Two Meets Despite Modifications, Limited Audience

With the added modifications to this season’s meets and practices, the HUHS girls gymnastics team is adapting to the changes in order to have a good season during the pandemic.

The gymnasts are required to wear a mask during both practices and meets, but are allowed to take the mask off when they are performing a routine. Additionally, all equipment must be wiped down after the all of the team is done with that event.

Despite these changes, assistant coach Bobbi Scherr does not think that they are affecting the team.

“The girls and coaches are just really happy to be able to have a season,” Scherr said. “We have been doing whatever is required of us so that we can compete. The State did approve for the gymnasts to remove their mask while it is their turn.”

According to Scherr, this change was allowed in order to maintain safety for the gymnasts. If the gymnasts were to be required to wear their mask for activities like the balance beam or bar routine, it could “injure the gymnast if [they got] distracted or blindfolded momentarily by the mask.”

Additionally, there is a limit on the audience members that are allowed to watch the gymnasts perform. The gymnasts are only allowed to have two family members in the stands per athlete. These family members must wear a mask at the event, and have to sit away from the other parents in the audience.

Senior Grace Mccune acknowledges that gymnastics does not normally have a large crowd because it is “long and somewhat hard to follow for people who don’t know what they are watching”, but still thinks that audiences are important in sporting events.

“Knowing that there are people watching you really drives you to go the extra mile [and] give it [your] all,” Mccune said.

Like Mccune, senior Emily Perkowski does not think that having a limited audience has affected the team persay, but she does think that it is upsetting she has a limit on who could attend the meets.

“Having a limited audience doesn’t affect me so much because gymnastics isn’t like basketball where there’s a huge student section, but not having anyone you want to come especially because it is my senior year is a big down fall,” Perkowski said.

Despite these changes that have been made to the gymnastics season, the team has won their first two meets of the season. The team won the meet against West Bend East on Dec. 16 with a score of 137.8 for the varsity team, and 118.2 for JV. Perkowski has already achieved some of her personal goals this season.

“We have competed in only two meets this year and I’d say [that] we have been doing very well [and we both] have won each meet so far,” Perkowski said. “I also have reached some goals that I wanted to accomplish in the start of the season.”