Last Saturday marked the beginning of the season for the Becker Bulldog gymnastics team, who hosted an eight-team meet and came away with a fourth place finish amid strong competition from a number of perennial Class AA powers and several state tournament caliber teams from a year ago.

Final Team Scores: St. Cloud Tech (134.15), Farmington (132.75), STMA (131.65), Becker (131.25), Willmar (130.35), North Branch (125.4) RC-PC-HF (123.15), HLWWHT (116.05).

Because it was the first meet of the season, the meet is structured with the performers being given a chance to interact with the judges in order to learn more about how they can improve their routines during the season.

This meet is always a highlight of the season as it is one of the few chances that the gymnasts get to interact and converse with the judges after their routines,” said Head Coach Kayla Kalinowski.  “We were able to get a few tips and pointers to help improve our team score in the future as well as have the judges reinforce what they are looking for this season.”

The Bulldogs started the competition on the vault and put together an impressive performance with the highest team vault score of the meet.  Riley Norberg put together the top individual score of the day on the vault with a score of 9.3, while Kalinowski also credited Lauren Woelfel, Fallon Peterson, Sarah Woelfel and Theresa Johnson with great vaults.

Next up was the bars event, and Norberg again led the way with a score or 8.2, followed closely by Johnson and Sarah Woelfel. 

The third rotation brought the beam exercise and the Bulldogs stumbled a bit with several falls among the first competitors.

The final rotation of the meet brought the floor exercise and again the Bulldogs performed well for their first meet.

Justine Vilmo stepped up and made her varsity floor debit, which went well.

The Bulldogs missed third place by just a fraction of a point, as STMA edged them by just .4 points.

The Bulldogs were scheduled to be in action last night (Dec. 13) versus St. Francis.  Look for results in next week’s edition of the Citizen-Tribune.