When freshman Josie Bryant received her personal record on floor with a score of 8.9, she said she felt a wave of support and excitement from her surrounding teammates.

“I was super proud of myself. I didn’t know I was capable of getting that high of a score,” Bryant said. “It was super special in the moment because lots of people were proud of me.”

According to gymnastics head coach Gretchen Novak, the team lost to Chaska-Chan 128.65 to 136, but still managed to attain their best overall score of the season.

“It went very well. We had our season high with a 128.65,” Novak said. “We had some people competing new skills which is exciting. This was our first JV and Varsity meet after winter break.”

Junior Yonit Krebs said the meet proved the team could continue to improve their overall score no matter who their opponent is.

“We really weren’t expecting to win, we know Chaska-Chan is really an amazing team, and they have a lot of skills that are just not attainable for us,” Krebs said. “Our goal for this meet was to just beat our previous scores and to do better than we have in the past, which I think we proved we can do.”

Krebs said along with winning JV all-around, she performed a new skill on vault that lead to a high beam score for her.

“I completed a (half on half off) vault which is the same vault as many Varsity competitors, and I ended up scoring the same as Varsity would score,” Krebs said. “JV in general scored really high on vault because we really improved our difficulty.”

Senior Annika Eldridge said the team showed strengths in its vault routines, but needs to focus on smaller performance aspects for future meets.

“Everyone did really great on vault, which is great since our vaults were kind of rough at our last meet. But I think we struggle with little things like not connecting our back to back skills, and our form could be better as well,” Eldridge said.

Novak said the meet had a larger crowd because it doubled as parent night.

“A lot of times it was both parents who came to support their gymnasts since we recognized them (at parent night),” Novak said. “We had the gymnasts give them flowers and make cards for them.”

Novak said she plans to focus on form during their next practices rather than teach new skills.

“Really improving our form (is our goal). We are kind of nearing the end of our season pretty soon, so rather than trying to get a lot of new skills, we are trying to perfect the ones we have, staying on the beam, straight legs, pointed toes,” Novak said.

According to gopark.org, the team will participate in the ‘Maple Lake Varsity Invite’ 11 a.m. Jan. 13 at Maple Lake.