C-G gymnast top 10 at nationals

E-mail this story

Print this story

Share

Nikki Novak, a freshman at Cary-Grove, finished 10th in the all-around at the USA Gymnastics Level 9 Easter National Championships from May 7-10 in Tupelo, Miss.

Novak’s Region 5 team won the national championship. Novak was the only Illinois gymnast on the Region 5 team, which also includes Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Michigan.

Heading into balance beam, the final event, Novak was in sixth place in the all-around competition. She fell on the beam, which dropped her to 10th, but Chris Riegel, her coach at Crystal Lake Gymnastics Training Center, said that even with the fall Novak had pulled off an incredible accomplishment.

“It’s incredible for me to realize that in only her first year at Level 9, she was one of the major players at nationals,” Riegel said. “It’s good confirmation for me how good she and all her teammates at Crystal Lake really are.”

Also making the trip to nationals as the first alternate was Christine Liautaud, an eighth-grader at Cary Junior High School.

For qualifying for the national team, Novak and Liautaud received official USA warm-up suits from USA Gymnastics.

“Both girls had a great experience, and we’ll use this as a building block to move forward to Level 10,” Riegel said.

Tidal Wave Tournament: The Crystal Lake Tidal Waves 10-younger team did not win the first Tidal Wave Tune-up from May 1-3, but the goodwill it produced with participating teams left them with a positive experience.

The Waves made the top four teams after pool play along with the Huntley Hurricanes, Triple Play from Rockford and the Orland Park Sparks. Triple Play won the tournament, defeating the Sparks, 7-2, in the championship game.

Tidal Waves coach Rob Baker said the tournament ran smoothly even with it being the team’s first year as host.

“Everything went great,” Baker said. “We had beautiful weather.”

One of the unique things about the tournament was that on the final day teams played against similar competition.

Typically in a 12-team tournament like the Tune-up, the No. 1 seed out of pool play faces the 12th seed. This generally produces some lopsided games, Baker said.

At the Tune-up, the top four teams played each other, teams five to eight faced off and teams nine to 12 competed.

“They loved the formal with teams playing their own level of team,” Baker said.

The format worked as it was supposed to Sunday, with close games at all three levels. The second and third level championship games even went to extra innings.

“We had three teams get trophies and they loved it,” Baker said.

The tournament was such a success that plans are already being made for 2010.

“It was a great experience,” Baker said. “Every team that I had is already talking about next year and making sure I invite them.”

• Rob Smith is a sports writer for the Northwest Herald. Write to him at rsmith@nwherald.com.