The Ballard High School gymnastics team is mere weeks away from hosting the KingCo 4A Championships where they’re looking to upset the defending champion, Woodinville.

Last week, on January 6th, the Ballard gym team beat Woodinville for the first time in school history.

“I have hopes,” said Coach Stephanie Gundel, now in her eighth year at BHS.

“This is the best team I’ve coached.”

At last week’s meet, Ballard’s Taylor Stern took first on vault and bars and won the all around with a career high 37.9 points. This broke her previous best all-around score of 37.d from December 16, the highest all-around score in the league.

The Seattle Times named her Athlete of the Week and she’s a competitor that could likely unseat the reigning champs.

“She’s a really consistent competitor. She’s calm at meets and performs the same or better as she does in practice,” Gundel said. “Taylor definitely has potential to win this year, especially since last year’s champion has graduated.”

A team co-captain, Stern said the season has been very successful so far and the new personal bests are “nice to have.”

“I don’t think gym is in my future for college,” said Stern, indicating that the championship will be the grand finale of her gymnastics career.

Hoping to go out with a bang, Stern is well aware that she has a good chance at the championships this year.

“I just have to keep up with my practices and make sure I keep myself and the team focused,” she said. “I have a pretty solid routine and I have to keep progressing and make sure I don’t get injured for KingCo and districts,” she said.

In addition to Woodinville, Ballard has stiff competition with Newport and Bothell.

“Bothell is always a threat and shouldn’t be underestimated,” Gundel said.

Newport has beaten Woodinville twice and Ballard has yet to beat Newport.

“We’re 2.8 points behind,” said Gundel. “It’s not unbeatable. We have to increase our start values and do better in vault and bars.”

Six of the Ballard team’s athletes will graduate this year including Stern.
“We’re well aware of that and we want to capitalize on it,” said Grundel.

Gundel expects the championships to be very competitive and encourages people to come out to their upcoming meets.

The next home meet is Thursday, Jan 20, at 7 p.m. against Inglemoor, Issaquah,and Redmond.