Young Gymnasts Making History In Albany

ALBANY (WJON News) -- Some Albany girls are making history for the high school and paving the way for future athletes. The Albany High School Varsity Gymnastics team is in its first year of competition and is having a lot of success despite their young age.

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The oldest team members and captains, Candace Berckes and Grace Grabmeier, are only freshmen. The other 10 gymnasts on the team are all seventh and eighth graders. Head Coach Dana Cartier says she is not sure the team truly understands the impact they are making:

"Yeah, I think the girls kind of, they understand what, what their role is right now and what they're doing for, you know, they're always like ah history in the making and you know we're going out there and look what we're doing. They totally get the concept of it but I also, they're so young that I don't know if they know the real impact that they're really putting in place."

She says it has been nice to have some early success too:

"Yeah, you just kind of never know with such a young team how they're going to perform that day and you know we've been going out there and you know doing our best, the best that we can and coming out ahead most of the time."

The team has won 4 dual meets already this year and recorded a team-best 130.9 score at the Maple Lake Invite last week. Cartier says some of the other teams are surprised with how young they are with the success they have been having:

"So I think they might get a little shocked but after the meets, they are like oh my gosh I can't believe that you have such a young team and look what you're doing already, so hopefully we stay on this high for awhile."

Cartier says she and the team couldn't do it without the great work of Assistant Coach Zach Eggert and support from the community. She says the team is proud to be making history and paving the way for others.

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