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Osbourn Park savors gymnastics title

By Dave Utnik

Published: February 23, 2008

VIRGINIA BEACH – The purple ribbons in their ponytails sort of clashed with the black and gold bee antennas that Osbourn Park ‘s gymnasts had perched on their heads Friday night.
But, for this one special occasion, fun overruled fashion sense. Everyone agreed on that.
“People thought it was cute,” senior Kayla Deitz said.
The bee thing became a theme for the Yellow Jackets this season and they went all out with it at the Group AAA state meet. They adopted a plush bee with the phrase Bee Mine on the back as a team mascot, wore t-shirts with the motto Bee Amazed printed on them and even borrowed a dozen or so bee-shaped crowns from Old Country Buffet to take with them to Tallwood High School .
Then coach Monica Brown came up with the idea for everyone on the team to wear the bobbing antennas during the opening processional.
“When we walked by all the judges started cracking up so we just decided to have fun with it,” sophomore Briana Knox said.
No one was laughing at the Yellow Jackets – not then and not at all during the competition.
While they clearly enjoyed the opportunity to compete in the state team competition, all six OP gymnasts – Sara Mogavero, Briana Knox, Megan McDonald, Kayla Deitz, Sam Garzione and Jacquie Teets – weren’t kidding around during events.
They performed standing back tucks on the balance beam, completed full twists on the opening tumbling passes of their floor routines and threw in a couple of Tsukahara vaults for good measure. After four hours, they’d done every big skill they could think of – even a blind change release move on the high bar – and wound up making history by winning a state championship for the second year in a row with a record-setting team score of 150.70.
“It’s the best feeling ever,” said Knox, who contributed a career-best 38.825 points. “We knew we might not win and we were going for second place really, but we decided to just bring it.”
And once the Yellow Jackets did, nobody could catch them.
Kellam, the 2006 state champion and 2007 runner-up, was the team generating most of the buzz before the competition began. And there were moments when the Eastern Region champions ap-peared to be unbeatable, especially on the uneven bars where Kirsten Strausbaugh and Katie Bar-ton each scored better than 9.8.
But the Yellow Jackets, who haven’t scored a single 9.8 all season, still managed to become the first team since 2003 to win back-to-back titles behind dominating performances on uneven bars, balance beam and floor.
They wound up defeating Kellam (149.75) by nearly a full point – and set new school, Northwest Region and Prince William County scoring records along the way. Hickory , which finished third for the second straight year, had 146.95 points.
“We wanted to do our best, but we knew it would be tough with the beach schools down here,” said Deitz, who finished her high school career as a three-time state champion, including a 2005 title at Stonewall Jackson. “We knew we had to bring it and everyone was focused in practice. It’s amaz-ing.”
Of the 16 routines that counted toward OP’s team score, 15 received a mark of 9.0 or higher from meet judges. McDonald, who earned a career-best 38.225 points overall, had scores of 9.65 on bars and beam, while Teets capped off the victory with a 9.55 on the final floor routine of the night.
“We came in knowing that Kellam and Hickory had higher scores than we did at regionals and districts so we knew we had big competition,” McDonald said. “I’m just so happy we pulled through this year.”
Even with a wide array of ailments – including foot, knee, ankle and back injuries – the Jackets prevailed thanks to a combined effort of 38.15 on beam, 38.10 on bars and 37.70 on floor.
“They started announcing the scores and I don’t think any of us thought we were ahead,” Deitz said. “But after beam, we realized we were ahead and it just kind of gave us that extra boost.”
The Yellow Jackets didn’t fare nearly as well on beam during the Cedar Run District and North-west Region championships. But they were almost flawless on Friday with only one harmless fall during five remarkable routines, including a 9.625 performance by Mogavero who earned the high-est overall score of her freshman season with 37.4 points.
“After bars we were really, really excited and then on beam we all hit and we were all really, really happy. We were jumping around,” McDonald said. “And then on floor all we really wanted to do was show it off and own it. We had fun out there.”
Thankfully, coach Brown also had bee antennas to help with that.