Marking their first home meet of the season, the WJ Gymcats fell short as they went up against the Walt Whitman Vikings on Wednesday, April 10.

As the clock hit 7 p.m., the Gymcats led their way onto the main gym, preparing for four events that each individual member would perform; vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise.

Prior to the meet, the Gymcats were wary of their competition and were determined to do their best up against Whitman. The Vikings are seeded #1 in the county and had won county championships last year so the Gymcats knew they were up against quite a team.

Unfortunately, the Gymcats lost with a score of 175.6 to the Vikings who had a score of 176.6. Despite the loss, this was the closest match they had in WJ history and the results were met with excitement and pride rather than disappointment lingering.

“Whitman’s team has a lot of girls on the team who do gymnastics outside of school so it was kind of expected to lose but we never lost that close to a team so I’m really proud of us,” senior Rachel Finn said.

Finn, along with her other teammates performed impressive tricks, turns and flips, each of the moves being improved more and more, trying to get the points margin gap to narrow down.

“The meet went very well, very smoothly. It was nice to have our first home meet and it was a little nerve-wracking to compete against Whitman because we knew they were ranked number 1 and predicted to win but I’m really proud of how the team did in general,” sophomore Shoshana Berger said.

Berger participated in the uneven bars and vault events, showing her incredible talent and tremendous effort.

“We had a lot of new girls join the team this year so we worked extra hard and although we lost by one point, we did incredibly well. We had three girls place for All-Around, placing them on the podium for all the events combined,” Finn said.