Mount Si reaches milestone with creation of women’s gymnastics
Published 7:04 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008
With the Wildcats’ move to KingCo 3A came the opportunity
to add new athletic programs to those currently offered by the high
school. Only two schools in KingCo 3A lacked gymnastics programs –
Mount Si and Cedarcrest – but with the creation of this year’s program at
Mount Si, one more school will step into the fray of competition.
Leading the creation and implementation of the program is
head coach Renee Tredo. Tredo is in her second year of teaching at the
Upper Valley high school and is an avid gymnastics enthusiast. Prior to her
arrival last year to teach physical education, she had coached one year at the
high- school level, competed personally at the high-school level and coached
four additional years at the junior-high level. In addition to her new duties
as gymnastics coach, she has been the Mount Si Volleyball coach for
two years.
Assisting her with the gymnastics program is Sherri Brown, who
also happens to be the volleyball assistant coach.
For their part, the district provided approximately $28,000 in funds
for the purchase of new equipment, none of which has existed in the
district before. Some of the monies will be recouped through Title 9 funds
and various fund-raisers put on by the gymnastics team.
High-school gymnastics consists of four events: floor, beam, bars
and vaults. Fourteen competitors stepped forward in the first year of the
program with three standouts having prior experience.
Heading the list is junior Yolanda Morton, who will be competing in
the vault and beam. Nikki Belt, also a junior, will add some experience to
the team as well, competing in the floor and beam; and teammate
Lyndsay Ray, another junior, will compete in the bars and floor.
Gymnastics events will be new to many Valley residents, but the
format is the same throughout the league. Each team starts on one specific
event; for example, Mount Si will start on floor with all of its athletes. Then
the whole meet rotates to a new event at the same time. There will always
be three schools at Mount Si’s meets so there will be one team on the floor
to start, one team on the bar and one team on vault.
The competitors will be judged by an official at each event with a
score shown for each girl. Then teams rotate to the next event.
After all teams compete in all four events, the judges add up the top
four scorers from each event and that becomes the team score. There is a
team score at every meet and there is a top six places for each event at every meet.
KingCo has its share of tough teams, as was evident last year
when Issaquah placed second in the state. Mercer Island and Newport are
also extremely tough schools.
“They always have been in gymnastics,” says coach Tredo. “It’s
only my second year in KingCo, and I’ve only seen the teams at the state
competition so I know they are strong.”
For comparisons in turnout, Issaquah had 17 and Mercer
Island had 61, according to Tredo. Every year gymnastic numbers can be
different because there is always a group of kids that loves gymnastics and are the
same age.
“Once they come into the school, they stick together,” says Tredo.
“For us it’s a new program and what I’m excited about is now that
it’s here, students may come here that wouldn’t have in the past
because Mount Si didn’t have gymnastics. So hopefully in the next three or
four years we will have a strong program up here and we can start pulling
those kids in that may go elsewhere.
“It’s really exciting to start a new program, but it’s also a huge
challenge starting a program from scratch. Getting the word out to the girls
was tough,” Tredo continues. “We started
a week earlier than the rest of the winter sports so there were some girls
who wanted to turn out but didn’t because of the earlier start.”
However, the newly created program will be lacking one aspect:
junior varsity ranks.
“Some schools do have JV programs but we didn’t have enough
girls for both. My goal is to get 20 girls at the varsity level and 10 at the JV
level,” says the coach. “We have a lot of
freshman which is good for the long term, but we also have the three strong
juniors.”
The team will hold a fund-raiser on Dec. 11 to help pay back the
funds necessary to purchase the new equipment. Elementary-age kids will
be able to spend two hours with the team in the gym for $10 each. Two
sessions are scheduled, with the first one from 9-11 a.m. and the second from
noon to 2 p.m. Interested parents should call the high school and ask for Renee
for more information.
The team’s first meet is scheduled for Thursday Dec. 2 against
Interlake and Skyline at Skyline. Start time will be 7:30 p.m.
