It was a record-setting night for the Britton-Hecla gymnastics squad on Monday.
The Lady Braves scored a season-high 135.800 points at the Estelline-Hendricks Invitational to finish second behind defending state Class A champion Estelline-Hendricks with 142.650. It was third-highest team score in school history, trialing the 2010 effort of 137.175 and a score of 136.100 in 2009.
The floor exercise team of Kennady Van Lith, Jaelee Grupe, Marley Sundin, and Ava Teveldal broke the school record with a 36.45 total. That surpassed the school standard of 36.30 set in 2024 by Sterling Mertens, Kaegan Fredrickson, Van Lith, and Abby Lee.
Van Lith also set a new school mark for an individual in floor exercise. The sophomore scored a 9.55, eclipsing the old record of 9.517 set by Ramy Hagen in 2010.
The local gymnasts also added two other second place finishes in the past week and defeated Sisseton for the first time this season. Coach Angela Grupe’s squad competed at the Deuel Invitational on Saturday, finishing second behind the host team, and traveled to Watertown last week Tuesday, placing in the runner-up spot behind the Arrows.
The Lady Braves will wrap up their regular season schedule at Deuel on Saturday and will host the Northeast Conference/Region 1A meet on Thursday, Feb. 5.
“It’s fun to have a meet with just the NEC teams right before the region,” said Grupe. “We were able to beat Sisseton for the first time this season and stay ahead of Milbank, barely. The region is going to be a dogfight. I believe our whole region will beat out all but maybe one team in Region 2, and I looked back through the team scoring records and this is the toughest the NEC teams have ever been.”
Van Lith qualified on the bars and is now pre-qualified for all four events in the state meet. Abby Lee was also a new state qualifier in vault.
“I believe this team still has more in them, and I hope to fine tune that mental aspect in the coming week,” concluded Grupe. “Competing fearlessly is a tough thing, but it will take just that to reach our scoring potential. Safe won’t get us to the place we want to be.
“Beam continues to be the area we need to execute better in competition. I still believe beam is our strongest event but we need to clean it up and be able to execute no falls at competition. I’ve seen steps towards improvement and confidence in the last week and am excited to have our individuals starting to peak at postseason time.”
Van Lith was the only local gymnast to place at Deuel, taking third in floor exercise and all-around and fifth on bars. At Watertown she was fourth all-around, fifth in floor and beam, seventh in vault and eighth on bars. Ava Teveldal earned a fourth on bean and Jaelee Grupe was sixth in floor.
At Estelline-Hendricks Van Lith was third in floor and fourth in vault, bars, and all-around. Ailyn Lee placed third in vault, Taryn Kraft was fourth and Ava Teveldal fifth on beam, and Grupe was fifth in floor and all-around.
The B-H junior varsity also placed second at Watertown. Marley Sundin was an event winner in vault.
FOR FULL STATS, SEE THIS WEEK'S JOURNAL
