With a score of 139.7 points at the IHSA Regional competition at New Trier High School on Feb. 3, the New Trier girls varsity gymnastics team placed No. 2, qualifying for the IHSA Sectional competition at Lake Forest High School on Feb. 12.

Out of all the night’s events (vault, uneven parallel bars, balance beam, and floor) the Trevian gymnasts placed in three out of the four categories. Sophomore Harper Jacobs placed fifth in all-around and vault, while tying for second with senior captain Elena Scarano in floor. Junior Zoe Junker placed fifth in uneven parallel bars, and sophomore Karis Park placed fourth in uneven parallel bars. 

While the team found success in vault, uneven parallel bars, and balance beam, the girls did not place in balance beam, which according to Head Coach Jen Pistorius, has been their “nemesis” of the 2025-2026 season.

“Were we better on a lot of the other events? Yes,” Pistorius said. “And had we stayed on beam, would we have won? Yes. But tomorrow’s another day, and we made it to sectionals, so that’s a great thing.”

Pistorius also explained that while two gymnasts, junior Lily McOmber and sophomore Lucie Friedman, stuck their landings on the balance beam, the rest of the team did not, and that could have been due to nerves.

“[The team does] really well in practice, and then a lot of it is nerve wracking to begin with,” Pistorius said.”Then take into…consideration…the stress with the meet and everything going on. Sometimes it’s hard to calm your nerves, so sometimes that plays into effect.”

However, vault was another story. Senior captain Anna Virgili stuck her landing with no stumbles after working toward that goal since freshman year. 

“I’m super happy for Anna that she landed her vault, because she’s been struggling,” Pistorius said. “She’s a senior, and it’s been hard for her to find her landing consistently. And she does it well in practice and it’s sometimes hard in meets, and she just stuck it cold. So I’m really, really happy for her.”

For Virgili, who received ovations from teammates and the crowd after landing, she felt proud. 

“It felt really rewarding because I’ve been working on [vault] the whole year, and I was never able to land it until today,” Virgili said. “So, it was one of the best feelings, and it was nice to feel how proud everyone was [of] me.”

Like Virgili, who had a strong routine but did not place, sophomore Emily North had a successful uneven parallel bars routine after coming back from a recent injury.

“Emily North started us off really well on bars,” Pistorius said. “She competed on Friday night at Conference, and so this is her second meet back. She had a really nice bar routine for us.”

On floor, the team had fun and performed well, especially Jacobs.

“Harper Jacobs is a sophomore, and she’s been very focused on her fluidness,” Pistorius said. “She’s always been very concentrative all the time, and she was so smiley and happy during her floor routine, so that was really fun to see. Everybody was really happy to see her smiling and laughing.”

Additionally, Scarano qualified for the sectional competition with a score of 9.2750 in floor during her last state series run as a senior. 

“It was one of her best floor teams that she’s done,” Pistorius said. 

Entering regionals Scarano was focused on endurance at practice.

“Throughout your routine, it takes a lot of strength,” Scarano said. “And with that, you need to build up your endurance. So you’re working on that and just working on the pressure because sometimes the nerves can really get to you. So you’re just rehearsing routines for both endurance and for pressure, to work [on] how to work on those nerves efficiently.”

The team also worked on little corrections such as holding their legs tighter together, “jumping bigger” and “finishing finer” according to Pistorius.

“We made a lot of little corrections,” Pistorius said. “It was focusing on a little bit more corrections that we needed to make to fine tune everything to up those little less things to get those little extra tenths [of a point].”

To prepare for sectionals on Feb. 12, Scarano is going to focus on recovery from regionals and fine-tuning her skills to get the most out of her performance.

“I’m definitely, once again, [working on my] routine a lot in practice,” Scarano said “Trying to clean up the little things. It really does come down to the tenths [of a point], so working on my dance, especially, and also just giving myself time to recover because we do have about roughly a two week period until sectionals.”

As a team, Pistorius said that they will focus on increasing the difficulty of their routines and on being more consistent with the balance beam. However, looking ahead to sectionals, Pistorius said that while she hopes the entire team can qualify for the IHSA State competition on Feb. 20-21 at Palatine High School, it might be unrealistic.

“I don’t think we could win as a team, but it would be really nice to get a high team score for the year,” Pistorius said. “It’d be great to qualify some individuals through to get to state. That’s always fun.”

However, throughout the season, Pistorius has enjoyed watching the team grow in all aspects and has truly enjoyed working with the gymnasts this season.

“It’s been so fun to see the growth that they’ve had this year, coming from where we were in the beginning of season to where they are now, skill wise and personality wise and everything,” Pistorius said. “It’s been such a really good aspect, a really good group of girls, and it’s been really fun.”