CHS Sophomore sensation Sammie Boster becomes state champion in the balance beam Saturday in Muncie

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com
Chesterton’s gymnastics comeback had to start somewhere, and what better place than at Worthen Arena on the campus of Ball State University, host of the 53rd annual state finals.
Specifically, on the balance beam.
That was where Trojans sophomore Sammie Boster’s inexorable march toward a state championship came to fruition Saturday.
Boster nailed her routine on the beam, she knew it, her coaches knew it, and even before they learned that her score was 9.675, they celebrated together with joy worthy of a state championship.
Half the field still hadn’t performed on the beam, so technically, anything could happen, but sometimes you just know, and for them, this was one of those times.
Boster’s score stood up as the winner by a comfortable margin and hours later, Chesterton athletic director Jeff Hamstra, a member of the IHSAA’s executive committee, draped the shiny first-place medal around the smiling sophomore’s neck.
To a sophomore in high school, 2021 seems like a long time ago. That was the last time Chesterton had a gymnast win a state title in an event when Mia Pak stood on the highest perch of the uneven parallel bars medal stand for the third year in a row.
“Really?” Boster said when told it had been that long. “Dang!”
She accomplished it with the winning blend of power and grace that led her to win the event at the DAC meet and the sectional and regional rounds.
Second-place beam finisher Avery Gleave of Fort Wayne Bishop Dwenger finished two-tenths of a point behind Boster with a 9.475.
“When I finished my routine, I felt really good about it,” Boster said. “And I was keeping an eye out on the scores throughout the meet, but I felt really good about it. I’d look over there every once in a while, when I saw some of the good people going but I ended up winning it.”
Boster appeared to have a confident air about her in the moments leading up to her signature event, didn’t look stressed out or sped up in any way. She shared how she gets her mind in the right place in big moments like that.
“Before I get on the beam I try not to think about much, just to keep myself calm and confident, that’s the big thing, is to be confident about what you’re about to do, and then throughout the routine with each skill I’ll think about one thing I really need to focus on,” she said. “And so, for my turn, it’s keeping my stomach tight and little things like that through each skill I think about, and it definitely helps a lot.”
Chesterton head gymnastics coach Christy Dzierba said she was confident in Boster’s chances to win the event because she had good practices and because “beam is her thing.”
Still, so much can go wrong in on a piece of equipment that is “4 inches wide, 4 feet off the ground and you’re up there flipping around,” was how Dzierba put it.
Boster calmed their nerves with a smooth performance.
The official program for the state finals listed the champions in every event since the 1984-85 season. Boster became Chesterton’s fourth different beam champion during that time, joining one of Saturday’s judges, Lauren West (2002), Leslie West (2003) and Sophia Hunzelman (2018, 2019), and she accomplished the feat on the day the biggest name in Chesterton gymnastics history was honored before the competition started.
Maria Bachuchin, who coached Chesterton to three state championships (1993, 2000, 2002) and three runner-up finishes, was named the 2024-25 IHSAA Outstanding Official Award winner. She judged the bars Saturday.
So, it was a high-profile day for Chesterton gymnastics, a day that started with Boster not doing what she needed to not do on the uneven parallel bars, which was to not fall. She fell once at the sectional and twice at the regional. Her 9.050 score was her best on bars since the DAC meet and a big tick up from the earlier rounds of the state tournament.
“I was really excited because bars isn’t my best, so I was happy just to get it done with,” Boster said. “I was happy to get it out of the way.”
Next, she competed on the beam and mesmerized the audience with a performance as pretty as it was powerful. She listed the skills she executed in order: “I do a straddle jump on the side of the beam, and then my full turn, then back handspring, back handspring, and I do a switch leap split three-quarter, and then an aerial, and a roundoff full dismount.”
Stir in a whole lot of skill and confidence and presto: She’s a state champion for the rest of her life, regardless of what happens from here.
“Her nerves were calmer than the coaches’ nerves,” said Dzierba, who is assisted by Jordan Bush and Jordan Kearby. “We were pacing.”
The most nerve-wracking skills to watch during the routine, according to Dzierba: “One is the aerial, but one is her split three-quarter jump because she has to land sideways on the beam, and if you’re just a fraction off, it can throw you off the beam. That’s what scares us the most.”
The floor exercise, normally a strength of Boster’s, was not so on this day.
“After my routine I didn’t feel the best about it because l knew it wasn’t my best routine, so when I saw the score, I was definitely disappointed about it,” Boster said of the 9.050.
That knocked her out of contention for the championship with only the vault remaining.
Boster quietly has battled a balky right ankle all season. Chesterton athletic trainer Marnee Flinn-Smith, without anyone telling her she had to do so, made the trip all the way to Muncie on Saturday morning so that she could tape it the way Boster has been used to having it taped all season.
During her first practice run on the vault, Boster irritated the ankle and was in intense pain that brought winces and tears. She gathered herself and answered the bell for two attempts, the first of which went well and earned her a 9.425, ninth place.
“I was proud of that,” Boster said.
She finished eighth in the all-around with a 37.200, falling two spots shy of a second trip to the medal stand. Homestead’s Jillian Creager won the all-around with a 37.975, edging Valparaiso’s Megan Garibay (37.925), who won the vault with a 9.775. Creager also tied for first with Fort Wayne Carroll’s Avery Ziembo in the bars with a 9.675. Dwenger’s Kobi Johnson won the floor with a 9.625.
Dwenger (112.975) edged Valpo (111.700) to win the team competition.
What’s next for Boster?
“Hopefully, next year I’ll get an all-around,” Boster said. “I think I will.”