HILLSBOROUGH: High school gymnastics team preparing to defend championship title

By Justin Feil, Contributor
The Hillsborough High School gymnastics team lost its two top performers that helped carry it to county, conference and sectional titles and third in the state.
But thanks to the incredible depth that was behind the graduated Sarah Pallay and Natalie Onderko, the Raiders can still contend for championships this year if they stay healthy. They have been dominant the last two years with a 10-0 season last year following the 9-0 campaign in 2014.
“We profess to take it one day at a time,” said Hillsborough head coach Beth Murrin. “The furthest we’ve gotten is everyone preparing as best they can to get as many people qualified into sectionals as we can. I certainly feel if we follow that plan and we build all the way through the season we have a good chance to contend for a county, conference and sectional title and defend those. Those will be goals. Right now, it’s just one day at a time.”
The Raiders started their season in promising fashion with a 105.825-95.825 win over Montgomery to open 2016 on Sept. 8.
“Things are starting just as they should,” Murrin said. “It’s an early look. Not everyone is ready on every event yet. We’re still trying to work on some skills and some routines. We know every test out, we’d like to get a little bit better. But we know November is our ultimate goal and especially with young kids, we’re trying to make sure we play it smart with any injuries, and new skills are a big test for them and we’ll push to get past injuries and those new skills at the right time. That’ll be a process that goes on all the way through October.
“We’ve been really good about the solid base that we have. We felt good about what we saw at Montgomery. It’s obviously super early, we didn’t throw every bit of difficulty we had, and we hope by the end of this week we can ramp that up a little more by the end of the week when the Raider Invitational is over,” she said.
Hillsborough will host the Raider Invitational on Saturday. The Raiders are the defending champions in the meet that is an early highlight.
“It’s a no pressure meet,” Murrin said. “In November, nobody is talking about what happened back in September at the Raider Invitational. It’s a good chance to go out in that situation and be aggressive and try to throw out what our top five lineup looks like now. It gives us an early idea what we look like. It gives the younger kids a chance to compete in a championship type atmosphere.
“It’s very different than a dual meet,” the coach said. “It’s nice to have that before we go to a county championship in early October. We use it as a learning experience. We’ll see where we are and then go back to work.”
Murrin is confident that the Raiders have no weaknesses. They can score well in all four events.
“Our first goal is to get each event at a 27, which is an average of 9’s,” she said. “We did that on vault and beam on the first day out, and beam can be tough on that because the skills aren’t there yet. I was happy with that. Floor will be fine. We just didn’t compete with all our difficulty, so that should be pretty easy. Now that we broke 27, we’ll look to break 27.5, which I think we can do on most of the events.
“What we will take time on is bars. It’s developing. We’re not going to go in and get 27 on week 1. It’s going to take some time because there are a lot of kids that are just getting some new skills and we want to make sure we put those out in positive situations. Our scores on bars might be a little lower early.”
Hillsborough has good depth top to bottom, which helps the Raiders score highly across the board. Kira Solt is the top returning gymnast for the Raiders. She is one of just two seniors on the roster, along with Lauren Tran.
“Kira Solt was our third all-arounder last year and she’s a leader,” Murrin said. “The freshmen and sophomores from last year that had an event here and there to contribute to, but didn’t necessarily need to be relied on for multiple events, they’re talented kids so they got this experience where they didn’t need to be relied on for everything and now it’s their time to step into bigger roles.”
Juniors are Kelly Brady, Ashley Choi, Grace Dinunzi, Rebecca Lubin, Stella Pashaian and Stutee Patel. Brady, Dinunzi and Pashaian all contributed in sectionals last year.
“Kelly and Stella are in the all-around picture,” Murrin said. “Stella will be competing and contributing every event. Grace will definitely contribute on the floor, I feel like all the events will come together for her. She had an off-season concussion. That’s going to take some time.”
Sophomores are Clare Hanlon, Renee Kinzler, Jennifer Martinez-Lopez and Brielle Seidel.
“Brielle Seidel will contribute primarily bars and floor but the other events could come around,” Murrin said. “And Cindy Liu, I expect to be an all-arounder. She did beam for us last year and I expect her to compete all-around.”
New to the team this year are freshmen Jordyn Bell, Kaitlyn Dundorf, Michelle Lopez-Martinez, Haley Mandell and Samantha Ringel.
“We have one freshman that will step right in, Sam Ringel,” Murrin said. “She was our top scorer at Montgomery. She has a good solid skill level, she has really nice clean lines and makes it look effortless and light, which is a great quality to have when judges are looking at you.”
When the Raiders look at the big picture, they are excited about the potential of the team. They will try to defend their county, conference and sectional crowns. The Raiders have won seven sectional titles, including the last two. Never in their history have they won three straight sectionals, but this could be the year.
“Last year at sectionals, we took eight out of the top 12 kids in sectionals, and two graduated so we still have six of the top 12 returning,” Murrin said. “People probably think that those two kids graduated and Hillsborough won’t be as good, but we certainly have the firepower to continue where we left off last year. It’s exciting. It’s new roles for people and more prominent roles so maybe a little more recognition on an individual level. But it’s our team goals we focus on and our team goals don’t change.”
The biggest meets come next month and into November. The Somerset County Championship is Oct. 6 at Montgomery, the Skyland Conference Championship is Oct. 21 at Montgomery and the Central Jersey, Section 2 Championship is Nov. 5 at Hillsborough.