‘Kind of blessing:’ Late start for gymnastics leads to smaller DeKalb-Sycamore roster

The DeKalb-Sycamore gymnastics team will have a different look this year because of the delayed start.

Most of the top-returning gymnasts have decided to compete for their club teams, whose seasons are starting now.

“A couple of the girls who do both are just staying in the club season instead of pulling out and going into the high school season because of the [season] shift,” coach Andy Morreale said.

There is a silver lining as the rest of the team is getting more hands on coaching in the smaller group.

“Actually, it’s kind of a blessing,” Morreale said. “They’ve all gotten really good. They’re getting a lot of the attention. There’s less kids to coach. We’ve seen huge improvement with some of them.”

One of those gymnasts who is benefiting from the smaller team is sophomore Leah Benson.

“I think it’s pretty cool because I never thought there would be such an opportunity to go out there and show people what you’re made of,” Benson said.

Benson has stood out on her uneven bars and balance beam routines.

“I just felt like I’ve been working hard and pushing myself in those events and doing good,” Benson said. “I’ve kind of learned, since doing gymnastics for so long, to control those nerves and focus on what I’m doing.”

The team’s strength this year will involve one of those events, the uneven bars.

“(Uneven bars) is normally one of the hardest to get strong at, but these guys have been doing great at it. That was kind of a perk.”

The team has had to scramble to get practice time in with the season starting so close to the announcement that sports are back on.

“Competing was definitely a shock because we didn’t think we’d have a season,” junior Hannah Burgess said. “But we’ve been training all summer and into the fall, so I feel like we’re ready. It was a little bit of a shock. It’s like ‘you have a meet in a week.’ It was shocking.”

Normally during the start of the year, the team would be focusing on getting to the state tournament as a team, but this year competing for a conference championship will have to do.

“There’s not a state meet, there’s not a regional meet, its just our conference meet, so we should be fine for conference,” Morreale said. “I expect us to vie to win it, even without those [club] girls.”