Freshman Leah Douglass wins the vault and Adriana Perez places second in the floor exercise but Trojans finish behind Lowell in three-school gymnastics meet at Bailly

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

The Chesterton gymnastics meet at Bailly Elementary on Tuesday night had reached the point where the home team needed a spark.
Sophomore Adriana Perez stepped onto the mat and provided it with a dazzling floor routine that earned her an 8.65 score and a second-place finish in the event.
Chesterton freshman Leah Douglass won the vault with an 8.65, but the Trojans, competing without defending balance beam state champion Sammie Boster, couldn’t overcome the points Kendyl Fidler scored for Lowell. The Red Devils won the meet with
94.550 points, followed by Chesterton (90.050) and Hobart (15.85).
Fidler won every event except the vault and won the all-around with 33.175 points. Douglass was second in the all-around with 32.150 points, followed by teammates Lexy Milton (29.850, fifth place) and Perez (28.050, sixth).
“The more meets they’re in, the more that they realize it’s the little things, and it’s just trying to get that through to them, but it’s the little things that we need to fix, and we need to do that every day,” Chesterton coach Christy Dzierba.
The coach was pleased with the way Perez executed her floor exercise.
“I love her floor routine,” Dzierba said. “She just needs to show it off a little more, and it’s the form, which is what we struggled with last year. But the music fits her. The floor routine fits her.”
By the form, Dzierba explained, she meant, “her arms and legs. They’re back a lot. She is jam-packed with leaps and jumps and skills and the form is most of her deductions.”
Perez chose the music for her routine and ran it past the coach.
“I thought it fit,” Dzierba said. “They have to send their music to me and I have to approve it and I listened and I really liked it. It fits her energy and her power. You have music that doesn’t fit the girl, it doesn’t work.”
A former cheerleader, Perez took up gymnastics, not an easy sport to learn, as a freshman.
“I have a way better attitude this year, so I’ve been able to do a lot more,” she said. “I had some mental blocks last year and I would hold back on some skills, but I started to grow more skills and try harder.”
Perez said she has improved her floor routine because “I have better jumps than last year. I changed my tuck half to layout half so it looks cleaner.”
She said that change came at Dzierba’s suggestion.
Perez explained why her floor routine is so far ahead of her other events at this point: “I did cheerleading, so I have tumbling experience and the other events it’s still my second year learning.”
Dzierba sees the baby steps of improvement that the gymnasts are making, even if they aren’t reflected in the scores yet.
“If they make a mistake, they know, because as soon as they’re done with their routine, they’ll come up and say ‘I should have done this.’ Yeah, you should have,” Dzierba said. “So, they know how to work through a mistake now, what to do in case you miss a series or something, so it’s getting there.”
The Trojans’ next three events all are at Bailly: vs. Crown Point, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 6 p.m.; vs. Michigan City, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 6 p.m.; Chesterton Invitational, Saturday, Jan. 31, noon.