The girls varsity gymnastics team took on Kenowa Hills on Jan. 9 at Kenowa Hills and was able to defeat the Knights with a final score of 134-72. The team’s highest scorers this meet were senior Maheen Mulligan and junior Hannah Walters, who is making a comeback from an injury.

Although the girls performed very strong routines, the scores were rather low. Performances on floor consisted of back tumbling passes such as full-twisting layouts, layouts, and back tucks, and front tumbling passes consisted of front handsprings, front fulls, and front punches. Some of the team’s highest scorers on the floor were Forest Hills Northern’s Sammi Blair, who scored an 8.85, Alyssa Wierenga, who scored an 8.725, and Forest Hills Eastern’s Mazie Rudloff scoring an 8.625.

Moving onto bars, the girls performed kips, giants, uprises, flyaways, straddle cuts, handstands, and clear hips. The highest-scoring bar routines were performed by Forest Hills Northern’s Hannah Briesbock, who scored an 8.75, and Forest Hills Central juniors Hannah Walters and Olivia Jeong, who scored a 7.875 and 7.95, respectively.

On beam, the girls each performed back handsprings, back walkovers, cartwheels, round-offs, full turns, backward rolls and a variety of jump sequences such as wolf jumps, straddle jumps, and switch leaps. Top performances in this event were by FHC senior Maheen Mulligan, who scored an 8.975, along with junior Olivia Jeong, who scored an 8.575, and FHN’s Hannah Breisbock, who scored an 8.9.

Finally, on vault, the girls performed pike and tuck tsuks, half on half offs, and half off full ons. Top performances in this event were made by FHN’s Rachel Chadwick, who scored an 8.5, and Alyssa Wierenga, who scored an 8.4. FHC’s Olivia Jeong scored an 8.45, and FHE’s Mazie Rudloff and FHN’s Hannah Briesbock both scored an 8.15.

Several days later, the Forest Hills gymnastics team competed in another meet against the Rockford Rams. While falling 143-136, Forest Hills still had a significant improvement from its last match up against Rockford’s powerhouse squad, and overall FH had a pretty successful night.

“All three gymnasts from Forest Hills Central really were top performers,” Olivia Jeong said. “I thought we all had a really solid meet and did really well, and we surprised ourselves because we weren’t too confident going into the meet.”

Maheen Mulligan scored a solid 8.825 on the beam, leading the team with the highest score in that event. Maheen also received a 8.275 on the floor and a 8.25 on the vault, making her one of the highest all-around scorers for the team.

Along with Maheen, Olivia also contributed greatly to the team’s score. She received very high scores for the night in all four events; she received the highest score on the vault with a 8.55, an 8.175 on the bars, 8.7 on beam, and lastly an 8.425 on the floor.

“Rockford is really good and has always been really good, but we were just happy to get the scores we did,” Olivia said. “As a team, our routines could have been cleaner, but we suffered no falls and gave it our all.”

The team is suffering significant injuries at the moment, and that gives it a little bit of a disadvantage when it comes to getting the most points as possible. One of the injured gymnasts is junior Hannah Walters, who has consistently been one of the team’s best gymnasts. Hannah could, however, participate in the bars event, and she scored a solid 8.125.

“It was really exciting to see Hannah have a good bar routine after being injured for most of the season,” Maheen said. “I’d say that this was one of our better meets; even though some of the scores were lower than we expected, we still did great.”

The Forest Hills gymnastics team has its next meet on Jan. 21 against Lowell.