Lake Washington continues dominance, wins KingCo championship | Prep gymnastics

After sweeping through the regular season competition, the Lake Washington High School gymnastics team topped all at the 2A/3A KingCo championships on Saturday at Bellevue High School.

By Joe Livarchik • February 7, 2016 12:49 pm
The Lake Washington High School gymnastics team won the 2A/3A KingCo championship on Saturday.
The Lake Washington High School gymnastics team won the 2A/3A KingCo championship on Saturday.

After sweeping through the regular season competition, the Lake Washington High School gymnastics team topped all at the 2A/3A KingCo championships on Saturday at Bellevue High School.

Lake Washington won with a team score of 154.925 to advance to next week’s Sea-King district tournament. Mercer Island placed second (144.9) to also advance as a team.

Although undefeated against their KingCo opponents this year, Lake Washington coach Katie Perrigoue stopped short of calling a first-place showing at Saturday’s meet an expected outcome.

“We were really close with Mercer Island all season, so they didn’t know what was going to happen,” Perrigoue said. “So it was exciting for them to pull through and win the meet.”

Lake Washington claimed four of the top 10 all-around scores of the day. Brittany Blaskovich was the Kangs’ top all-around finisher, placing second with a score of 32.55. Joeli Pence was fourth (32.025), Nadia Popovici placed eighth (30.75) and Megan Philips was ninth (30.325). Interlake’s Amy Yeung had the top all-around score of 32.65.

Popovici won the vault competition with a score of 8.55, and placed third on beam (8.1). Pence was runner-up on floor (9.275) and third on bars (7.6). Blaskovich was third on floor (9.15), fourth on bars (7.25) and fifth on beam (8). Blaskovich and Pence tied for seventh (8.15) on vault.

Philips was fourth on beam (8.05) and 10th on bars (6.45), and Brittany McCormick was seventh on beam (7.75) and ninth on bars (6.7).

Heading into Saturday’s meet, Perrigoue said points of focus for her team were doing well on bars and on beam, two events Lake Washington easily won. Now, the Kangs will see if they can continue their success through districts and claim one of the three team berths for the state championships.

If the Kangs perform like they did Saturday, the outlook would be promising.

“They’ve been working so hard all week just for this meet, they were ready,” Perrigoue said. “Brittany Blaskovich did a great job just improving her skills today and [so did] Nadia Popovici. They all did great.”

The 2A/3A Sea-King district gymnastics championships will be on Feb. 13 at Ballard High School. Individual competition begins at 9:40 a.m., and teams will march in at 1 p.m.