Super Bohl effort by Patriots

There was no question who the top boys gymnastics team was Friday night at the Bob Bohl Invitational in Mundelein.

Behind the top three all-arounders in the 14-team meet, No. 3-ranked Lincoln-Way East rolled to the championship with 161.95 points.

Stevenson had an outstanding performance with a season-high score of 141.2 for runner-up honors.

But Lincoln Way East's depth proved to be too much for the rest of the field, as all-around champion Dan Hutton's 9.32 average helped his squad roll to the title.

Elk Grove placed third in the balanced meet with a 130.8 to nip Niles West (130.375). Libertyville (126.44) placed fifth followed by Buffalo Grove (124.36) and Hoffman Estates (121.95).

Sophomore all-arounder Lukasz Adamczyk continued to shine in the early stages of the 2008 season for Stevenson with a fourth-place 8.33 average. Stevenson junior Bryan Pusateri placed sixth overall with a 7.79 average to edge Libertyville's Ashton Coulson (7.74 average) in seventh place.

"Everybody is starting to get a little spark under them and the team is doing great," said Stevenson coach Mike Farina, whose team improved its previous season high by over 15 points. "They're attacking their routines and going at it hard."

Barrington may have placed 10th overall, but Kellen O'Connor soared to first place on floor exercise for the Broncos with a 9.55 to outdistance Buffalo Grove's Steve Dugan (9.3) in third.

Pusateri was the still rings champion with a 9.1 while Adamczyk took runner-up honors on pommel horse with a 9.3.

Dugan added a second-place 9.26 on vault along with a third-place 9.3 on floor exercise.

Libertyville lost a lot of depth to graduation from its 2007 Elite Eight team, but Coulson and all-around teammate Greg Wilhelm have led the Wildcats early on.

"I did pretty good on still rings, parallel bars and vault, and those were three of my better events," Coulson said. "I had a little fumble on high bar and I had a lot more trouble on pommel horse tonight."

James Lee led Hoffman Estates with a fourth-place 8.9 on still rings with Mike Jachura's sixth-place 8.2 leading Elk Grove on parallel bars.

"This was our third meet in three days and we just weren't as sharp today, which is understandable," said Elk Grove coach Bill Watts. "We had our best high bar score of the season with one fall and that is promising that our high bar is finally starting to come together."

Stevenson's Mike Wilner placed ninth overall with Siebert and Lee rounding out the top 11.

"We set some goals on every event and on three of the events we reached the goal," said Buffalo Grove coach Chris Stevens. "Jason Siebert had his best set of the year on still rings, Steve Dugan had one of his better vaults, and overall we did pretty well."

Libertyville coach Curt Austin was also optimistic about the progress his team has already made this season.

"This is the strongest team we've entered in a few weeks and it's our first meet since spring break so we made some positive changes," said Austin. "We have quite a window for improvement right now and the key is going to be their work ethic in the gym because we have the talent."

After a two-year hiatus, Mundelein coach Eric Liva likes what he sees with his young Mustangs squad and the Bohl Invite.

"I want to have 18 teams in this meet, but the West Suburban Conference is having their meet too, so you have a ton of the state competing tonight," said Liva, whose team placed 11th. "We want to finish the season at 120 this year and we want to just keep getting better."