Owatonna gymnastics won its third straight Big Nine championship Saturday, their 14th overall conference title since 1972 according to www.big9.org. OHS scored 146.6 to win by about four-and-a-half points. The Huskies go for their third straight Section 1AA title Friday at John Marshall High School. OHS finished third at the state meet in 2017.

Huskies' coach Tom Smith said the team got off to a strong start on the beam, but had a few struggles throughout the meet. They scored 36.1 to open the meet. "When you hit beam with a score like that, you're looking pretty good into a meet," said Smith. Ali An had a great floor routine at nearly 9.6, but the Huskies had to count a fall in their score as well.

Smith said the vault score was as strong as usual, clearing 37. He was confident entering the bars, "(but) for some reason things just did not click for us. We didn't stick our landings. He had a couple of falls."

He called it, "not an extraordinarily great meet, but to go three years undefeated in the conference and walk through the meet as we did, we're still pretty confident going into sections." Ali An led OHS with a 37.275 to finish third in the all-around. Becca Olson was fourth, Lindsay Bangs seventh, Syd Kretlow ninth and Lucy Macius 11th.

Smith said Northfield, Rosemount and Farmington will all put up a strong fight Friday night at 6PM at John Marshall High School. Owatonna's first event will be the floor exercise.

 

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