February 28, 2018 at 1:19 p.m.
RHS gymnastics team hands out year-end awards
RHS gymnastics team hands out year-end awards
Sticking to their tradition of the past few seasons, coaches Heather Sturtevant and April Denis did not had out subjective awards, such as most valuable and most improved, rather they focused on objective awards based on scores and performances throughout the season.
"What we like to try to do is really highlight and celebrate everyone's individual accomplishments. Obviously, as a team we did some great things," Sturtevant said during the banquet. "We're always trying to improve upon ourselves. Yeah, it's nice to get the medal when we go to an invite or get that medal at conference, but we hope that every year you're trying to improve yourself."
The team's top awards went to those who achieved scores of 8.0 or higher in an event this season, or 30.0 or above in the individual all-around. Rhinelander's two state qualifiers, Stephanie Kuester and Raven Sturtevant, both achieved scores of 8.0 or better on all four events, and surpassed 30 in the all-around. Makayla Kuester, Stephanie's twin sister, also reached the 8.0 plateau on vault and freshman Lilli Bishop joined the 8.0 club with an 8.025 performance on floor exercise during last Thursday's WIAA Division 2 sectional meet in Antigo.
"One of the nice things about gymnastics, because we are judged and given a score, it's real easy to just be objective and throw out some benchmarks and whoever makes it, makes it," Heather Sturtevant said.
In addition to fixed scores, team members earned awards if they recorded personal bests throughout the year in any of the events. Stephanie Kuester, Raven Sturtevant, Mikayla Evenstad and Alyssa Scheuermann earned those awards. Freshmen Bridget Koser, Autumn Shafer, Bishop and Brynlei Kuhn, who did not have previous high school career-highs, received ribbons signifying their highest score of the year in each event.
Eight members of the squad earned varsity letters - Koser, Bishop, Shafer, Evenstad, Raven Sturtevant, Harlie Zimmermann, Stephanie Kuester, Makayla Kuester and Alyssa Mitchell. To letter, gymnasts had to participate on varsity in a specified number of competitions during the season.
In addition, all team members received medals and T-shirts signifying the Hodags' 2017-18 Great Northern Conference Small division championship.
Heather Sturtevant said recapturing the conference title following an injury-riddled 2016-17 season was truly a team effort.
"We did have girls that had to step up. We had girls that might not have been on varsity that had to (fill in)," she said. "Steph missed two meets, Raven missed two meets, Makayla missed a bunch. We still had injuries, but we were able to overcome them much better than last year."
Additionally, they presented awards to the gymnasts who had the most no-fall routines during the regular season - Raven Sturtevant and Mitchell at five each. This year's three juniors - Sturtevant, Evenstad and Zimmermann - were named captains for the 2018-19 season.
The season will conclude Saturday as Stephanie Kuester and Raven Sturtevant compete at the WIAA state gymnastics meet in Wisconsin Rapids.
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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