Columbus East’s Bethany Lewis performs on the beam during a meet against Bloomington South and Edgewood Monday at Columbus East High School.
Tommy Walker | For The Republic
In a meet in which bigger teams from Bloomington South and Edgewood put up higher team scores, it was an individual gymnast from Columbus East that stole the show.
Freshman Bethany Lewis won three of the four events, plus the all-around competition Monday to lead a small Olympian team.
“She’s working really hard,” East co-coach Katie Menefee said. “All of them are working really hard at practice and trying to fine-tune everything and get new skills for sectional.”
Bloomington South won the meet with a 102.85. Edgewood took second with a 97.65, and the host Olympians finished with a 92.05.
Lewis scored a personal-best 9.45 in winning the beam. She also won the vault (9.0) and floor (9.35) and finished third on the bars (8.2) on her way to a personal-best 36.0 all-around score.
“I just tried to have fun and not worry about how well I do,” Lewis said. “It’s one of the only beam routines this year I’ve not fallen on. I think it was a really good meet, one of my personal bests. We all just tried our best tonight and did the best we could.”
Shelby Kendrick had a couple scores in the 8s, scoring an 8.3 on the vault and an 8.2 on the floor for East, which had only three gymnasts on two events and four on the other two events.
The Olympians scored in the 24s on the vault, beam and floor, but struggled to an 18.95 on the bars.
“I think the other three events went really well,” East co-coach Melissa Dishinger said. “Bars is always hard to score on anyway, but I still think we did OK.”
The Olympians have two more meets before the sectional. They host Owen Valley on Feb. 15 and visit Seymour on Feb. 19. The Franklin Central Sectional is Feb. 23.
“They have the drive right now to improve their scores,” Menefee said. “They’re doing a good job at working hard to get there.”
“I’m really happy with how we’ve been progressing,” Dishinger added. “The girls are cleaning things up. They’ve put some new skills in. We’re still working some new skills for later, but everybody has improved, and that is our goal.”
