Addison Trail 2nd at Dennis Invite

By Chris Walker
Daily Herald Correspondent
Posted Sunday, April 08, 2007

The Addison Trail boys gymnastics team is ignited by Nick Ostapa, and Ostapa was awfully good during Saturday's Fred Dennis Invite.

Ostapa did his best to honor Dennis, a former Southern Illinois University Saluki and two-time NCAA champion, as the junior won the horizontal bar with a 9.1, finished second in the all-around with a 50.65 and helped Addison Trail claim second place with a score of 143.750.

Downers Grove North won the invite with a total of 150.450.

"We got our high score today, so we're happy with that," Blazers coach Tom Wirth said. "We still haven't hit rings and we had to count two falls on high bar tonight and also had an unusually bad floor day. So, yeah, it's nice to still be improving, but we still have a lot of potential for our team score to go up."

In addition to his win on horizontal bar, Ostapa finished third on parallel bars and pommel horse.

"I messed up on floor at the beginning but came back on horse," Ostapa said. "I got it done on horse with my best routine of the year, and with the promise of our second and third scores I think we'll make some bigger steps in our next few meets."

Conant finished in third place with a 142.450 thanks to a strong performance from junior Jon Snyder, who finished in third place in the all-around with a 50.4. Snyder tied with Geneva's Kai Kosog with a 9.3 for the floor exercise title.

"We could've had a better meet, but we'll see what we can do in the next few weeks," Conant coach Paul Kim said. "We're still trying to put together a solid meet where everybody hits. If we do that we'll be up there with everybody else."

Lake Park finished in fifth place at 130.35 points but struggled mightily on pommel horse with a score of 13.8.

Glenbard North scored a 128.6 for sixth place, which didnt meet the expectations of coach Chris Johnston.

"This wasn't the greatest night," Johnston said. "We had a lot of trouble, which we'll try to correct on Monday. We'll go back to the drawing board and see if we can get back on track."

Glenbard East allowed four freshmen to compete at the varsity level, and while they showed some promise, their freshmen routines only netted a seventh-place finish (120.25).

"I gave them some exposure tonight and they did their freshmen routines," Glenbard East coach Bruce Beiersdorf said. "It was good practice for them, but they're just freshmen and this was new to them."

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