Grosse Pointe United Gymnastics (GPUG) clinched first place at the Frasier Invitational on Saturday, Jan. 9. The team went in with high expectations, even though they were facing tight competition.

“I think I was expecting to get first place because we’ve been to the meet for the past couple years that I’ve been here and we have lost a few really good people and we gained a lot of good people,” senior Jennifer Gmeiner said. “It was a really tight competition between us and Plymouth High School, but we ended up pulling through.”

Due to the past experience with this meet and how the team has been doing at others, they expected to do fairly well. GPUG has won this meet every year they were invited, making it their third victory at Frasier.

“This was our fourth meet of the season and so far we’ve won two meets and lost a really close one on Wednesday. So, we went in there really wanting to win and beat primarily the main competition, Plymouth, and other teams like Birmingham and Tecumseh High School. So, we had our eyes on winning this meet, the girls did not want to accept second place or third place,” assistant coach Kristin Remillet said. “They had a big time motivation to win this meet for the third time in a row. Some of our individuals have been very successful at this meet, too. So, a lot of the individual members of the team had lots of motivation as well.”

Motivation was a key part of keeping the team driven, even after they had some unfortunate falls during the beam part of the competition. Junior Isabelle Nguyen set an invitational record with a 9.7 on floor exercise, senior Michelle Ellis won the Division II all-around for the third year in a row and Gmeiner placed second in the all-around and on uneven bars.

With the competition being so early in the season, it allowed the team to evaluate their performance and see where they could improve.  

“We will definitely be working on beam a lot, it’s a very difficult event and the balance beam is one where it could go your way one night and the next day not your way. So, a lot of nerves play into your routine on beam,” Remillet said. “I think we’re going to be hitting beam really hard this week, that was the lowest score out of all four events that we had.”

While Remillet was looking at what the team can improve on, some GPUG members believe they should focus more on competing as one.

“We should work on trying to get everyone to compete because right now we only have a few certain people who actually did club and there’s a lot of potential,” Gmeiner said.  “There are girls who have never done gymnastics and they’re doing awesome so far, but I think if we start to get them competing and getting recognized, I think it would make it a lot more fun for the entire team.”

Even after the victory, GPUG hopes to improve upon the beam portion of the competition. Since the event is unpredictable, the team wants to ensure they are prepared for states in March.

“We were a little bit nervous going into the meet to start on that event (beam) because it’s a bit more of a nerve wracking routine that our girls perform. That was a little bit challenging, but we also knew that there were a couple teams in the mix that we wanted to beat, and we felt that we could and that we were right up there with them,” Remillet said. “The result was in our favor and we did great … we had much room for growth for the next couple of meets, but we put out a good meet.”