Girls Gymnastics: Valpo rules at Vikings Pairs

Updated: January 8, 2012 12:14AM

There was plenty of green atop the podium at the sixth annual Vikings Pairs Invitational.

Valparaiso dominated Saturday’s event, capturing the team title at the four-team meet and also sweeping the individual portion by placing their four duos at the top of the standings.

“It’s definitely a good start to the season,” Valparaiso coach Lorie Cook said. “I think we had some really good performances overall. They were a very cohesive group and did a nice job of supporting each other.”

The top pair consisted of returning state finalist Hannah Erwin and freshman Rushelle Miller.

For each event, as well as the all-around winner, the top score belonged to Valparaiso. Erwin posted the highest score on bars (9.450), Allyson Kraft received the highest score in the vault (9.300), and Morgan Algozine finished with the top score in two events: beam (9.500) and floor exercise (9.500).

“What’s really nice about today is we had good scores from everyone,” said Cook, who also spoke highly of Miller, one of the newest additions to the squad. “Rushelle is doing some skills that are new to her and she did a really good job with them.”

“I was a little nervous,” said Miller, who was competing in just the second meet of her career, “but everyone else on the team did a good job of calming me down. I think I did well, but there’s still a lot of room for me to improve.”

Elkhart Central took second place in the team portion, followed by Lake Central. The Indians’ top performance came from senior Haley Bartolomei and freshman Andi Wartman, whose all-around score of 32.700 put them in seventh place.

“I was really pleased with our freshman today; our seniors came through today, too,” said Lake Central coach Brian Yancey.

“But we did have some uncharacteristic mistakes today and we’re going to need to polish some of those skills.”

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