Snyder, Rink busy as Conant hits season high
Conant gymnasts Jon Snyder and Steve Rink were very busy Saturday competing in all six events of the fast-paced John Berkel Invite.
However, the duo was even busier afterward collecting awards after the Cougars took first place for the second straight year in the meet hosted by Niles West in Skokie.
Conant posted a season-high 147.3 while earning 22 individual medals, including 14 between Snyder and Rink.
"Yeah, (they are) heavy," said Rink of the numerous medals around his chest. "It was awesome. We've been aiming for that (team score) since we started and we never hit it until now."
The Cougars senior captain, who won all-around honors with a 52.5, felt it was about time.
"That's where we want (our team score) to be," Snyder said. "Everyone was just on. The adrenaline was pumping and everyone did their best.
"We should be around here, if not higher. This isn't the end. We're going to go a couple points higher. We might be able to break 150."
Snyder and Rink finished 1-2 on both the parallel bars and horizontal bar. After scaling back his events, Clinton Martin took second place in both the vault and floor, with Snyder placing first on the floor. Rink, who finished third all-around at 48.45, also placed third on pommel, ninth on rings and tenth on vault and floor.
Sophomore Anthony Crivilio finished seventh on the p-bars and eighth on pommel horse, while Frank Gottardo was fourth on rings and ninth on p-bars. Austin Bolesta added an eighth place finish on the horizontal bar.
"This is a meet that we like," Conant coach Paul Kim said. "They don't like the morning practices but they do well in morning meets.
"We just have to keep this and don't go back down again. We have a tendency to do up, down, up, down. Hopefully this is not the peak and we'll continue up."
Led by the all-around performance of Jason Siebert, Buffalo Grove took third place with a season-best 122.78. Siebert was fourth among all-arounders with a 45.7 after finishing fifth on rings, high bar, p-bars and floor, and sixth on pommel.
"Today I felt good about floor -- that was my new high at 9.1 -- and all the other events went OK," Siebert said. "(It was) just pretty much execution. I'd been a little shaky on floor and I finally hit the routine."
Junior Corey Richmond took 12th on rings with a career-high 6.5 while Steve Dugan placed first on the vault with a personal-best 9.53 and added a third place finish on floor.
"Overall, I'm happy," Bison coach Chris Stevens said. "The progress is good. We want to (improve) by five points at a time.
"We were at 117 last time and now we want to go for 125. For this part of the season, I think we're doing pretty well."
Schaumburg scored 113.95 to finish in seventh. Saxons coach Howard Rubin was happy with the performances of Jim Whelan (fifth) on pommel, James Nguyen (sixth) on rings and Steve Long's vault and sixth-place performance on floor.
However, Rubin saw a lot of room for improvement.
"We still need to do more routines and make sure that we're doing all the requirements," he said. "We've got a lot to do and a short time to do it."