Township gymnastics team overcomes adversity, injury

Barbara Floyd found herself bouncing between roles as coach of the Brick Township gymnastics team to teacher.

Some team members had experience and competed in club programs in the off-season. Others never tried the sport until making the Brick team. Floyd isn’t complaining, especially after a "relatively good season," despite injuries that set her team back at the beginning, wherein some of her gymnasts raised their performance levels.

"We had three girls carrying the team and they did a really good job, considering we did not have a lot of backup [experience]," said Floyd. "The girls did very well, considering we lost our best all-around girl."

Maria Scalzo had high expectations but had to sit out the season while recovering from knee surgery. She will return next fall for her senior season.

Junior co-captain Liane Sninski sprained her ankle badly a week before school started and missed the first five meets. Sninski later finished second in the vault in the Shore Invitational. Brick finished 4-5 in dual meets.

"We had a pretty good balance beam season almost every meet," said Floyd, who got a steady performance in that event from senior captain Lauren Peterson, who scored a 9.0 in the event in a meet against Manasquan.

"She made the most improvement during the season. We need to upgrade the [parallel] bars for next season," said Floyd.

Junior Natalie Trainor and sophomore Jocelyn Isaac were the other two who "carried the team," along with Peterson. Lauren Tuohy had some good moments, finishing third in the bars in the Shore Invitational. Freshmen Kataleyn Isaac and Amanda Curtis also made strides of improvement during the season.

If all of the underclassmen return and work hard in the off-season to improve, Floyd said her team "stands a chance" to challenge in the keenly competitive Shore Conference next fall.

—Wayne Witkowski