Franklin Combined finds championship form
Team overcomes struggles; seeks 5th straight title
WIAA STATE GYMNASTICS MEET
Golf has the yips, basketball the free throw jitters, baseball the dreaded batting slump — tough times when nothing is working right.
Gymnastics has the funk: A deep, dark hole of despair where the brain, arms and legs somehow don’t function together. Climbing out of such a morass takes time, focus and patience, and even then, sometimes never happens.
The Franklin Combined gymnastics team fell into a collective funk this season. Scoring by the four-time defending WIAA Division 1 state team champions dropped to the lowest levels in years. The usually unflappable squad seemed flustered and flummoxed.
“We got really mental,” said junior Sam Balcerak, one of the team’s top competitors.
But Franklin fought, focused and found their winning form just in the nick of time. On Friday at Wisconsin Rapids, the Sabers will compete for their fifth straight WIAA gymnastics team title, which would tie a state record.
“For the girls, they believe why can’t we do it? Why not us?” veteran coach Katie Moore said. “The state meet is nothing but a great opportunity. . . . I will say that it would be great to win it with everything we have been through this season.”
The season seemed to start well enough. The team, which consists of gymnasts from Franklin, Muskego, Oak Creek and Whitnall high schools, lost only one gymnast from last year’s championship winner.
“We didn’t have huge expectations, but we had girls who could add events from last year,” Moore said. “Start slow and build.”
In the first meet of the season, Franklin won the sixteam Frosty Flip with a respectable first-meet score of 138.35. In early January, they finished second at the Emerald Classic at Waterford with 138.475.
Then the weirdness set in. Balcerak hurt her left knee. Others girls struggled to master tougher, higher-scoring routines. Scores fell to scarily low levels. In the middle of January, when the Sabers are usually gathering steam, the team bottomed out, scoring only 131.0 at a three-team meet in Kenosha.
“Suddenly girls were looking around trying to figure out what we were going to do without Sam,” Moore said. “That’s when we started having real doubts. We were struggling mentally even at practice.”
The gymnasts knew better. “We knew what we could do,” said junior Erin Scholz, in her second year with the varsity.
Moore, along with assistant coaches Bill Wall and Joy Provan, had long meetings trying to figure out the right buttons to push.
“Bill pointed to the state championship banners in the gym and said, ‘maybe we should stop worrying about getting another one of these and see if we can get the very best out of these girls,’” Moore recalled.
The team changed its warmup routine, injecting more energy into a usually docile period of stretching and chatting. “We started to get moving right away,” Moore said. “That helped.”
Balcerak, who had a torn meniscus, returned. Scholz got more comfortable with a new, tougher vault. Senior Jerica Kotarak, who had other school commitments that kept her away from some meets, was back.
Slowly, the Sabers found their form. They placed third in the Kenosha Invitational with a 139.525 and second at the annual Nordentoft Invitational at Mukwonago with a season-high 143.65.
Those performances set the stage for the Division 1 sectional at Mukwonago on Feb. 26. The team put it all together that night, dominating the meet with a 147.325 and earning its eighth straight spot at the state team meet.
Franklin got great individual efforts from Kotarak, Balcerak and Scholz. Kotarak qualified for the state individual meet in the all-around, vault and uneven bars. Balcerak earned a spot at state in the bars, balance beam and floor exercise. Scholz made it in bars. Senior Taylor Oleszak also qualified in the beam.
“We were just as surprised as anyone with the sectional score,” Scholz said. “Everything finally clicked.”
The Sabers will to try to keep clicking at the state meet, where Franklin is historically good. The team finished second in 2009 and 2010 before winning four in a row. In 2013 they set a state record with a score of 150.516. The fifth straight title would tie the state record accomplished by De Pere, which won Class B championships from 1986 to 1990.
Franklin should get heavy competition from Arrowhead, which posted the state’s highest score this season with a 148.425, and Mukwonago/ Troy/ Kettle Moraine, making its first appearance at the state team meet since 1997.
BASICS
WHAT: 45th-annual WIAA state gymnastics meet. WHEN: Friday and Saturday.
WHERE: Wisconsin Rapids High
School.
QUALIFIERS: A complete list can be
found at wiaawi.org. TICKETS: $6 per session. BROADCAST: A highlight show of the meet will be aired on FS Wisconsin on a date and time in April to be determined.
FOLLOW IT LIVE: Receive updates of the meet on Twitter @wiaawistate with the hashtag #wiaawigym. Also follow daily recaps on Facebook.
SCHEDULE: The team competition in both divisions begins at 2 p.m. Friday. The individual competition in both divisions begins at 11:10 a.m. Saturday.
LOWDOWN
Division 1: Franklin Combined put itself in position to win its fifth straight title by winning the tough Mukwonago/ Kettle Moraine Sectional with a season-best score of 147.3250. The team’s toughest competition figures to be Arrowhead, which topped Franklin’s score with a 148.4250 in its sectional.
Division 2: Whitefish Bay, which has won three of the last four titles, will be in the hunt again, but Mount Horeb is the team to beat. The Vikings own the top score in the division this season (144.6) and owned the division’s top sectional score (142.1250). Other teams to watch are River Falls and Viroqua Co-op.
AREA GYMNASTS TO WATCH
Sam Balcerak, jr., Franklin Combined: The defending Division 1 floor champion and fourth-place finisher in the all-around has been slowed by a knee injury this season.
Molly Benavides, sr., Burlington Co-op: A two-time champion on the
vault titles and in the the beam,vault with she a won 9.775a sectionaland the competefloor (9.650)in the all-around.this year. She will also
She’ll Samanthabe in the Dziak,mix in jr., the Waterford:Division 2 vault, an event she tied for third in last season. She ranked fifth on the honor roll with a 9.425.
Bailey Fitzpatrick, sr., Burlington Co-op: The all-around state champion in 2012 and ’13 won the sectional title last week with a 38.450 score and owns the state’s top effort in the event (38.575) this season.
Jorin Fredman, sr., Arrowhead: The reigning state champion in the Division 1 all-around posted a season-high score of 38.2 in the sectional.
Maddie Gleed, jr., Grafton/ Cedarburg: She won the beam, floor and vault at the Manitowoc Sectional on the way to claiming the all-around title with a score of 36.100.
Jerica Kotarak, sr., Franklin Combined: She finished third in the allaround (36.850) in the deep Mukwonago/ Kettle Moraine Sectional, a score that would put her in contention for her second straight top 10 finish.
Mary Claire Potter, jr., Whitefish Bay: The three-time state qualifier is going for her second straight top 10 finish in the all-around. She was sixth last year and took second in the sectional last week (35.775).
Taryn Sherman, jr., Arrowhead: She tied for second at the sectional meet, but her personal best in the all-around (37.25) this season shows her potential for a high finish in the event.
Aly Yurkowitz, soph., Whitefish Bay: The defending Division 2 champion in the floor exercise is back in that event and will contend in the all-around, an event she took fourth in last season. Mark Stewart