L-Way gym team guns for state title

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Dan Hutton got to experience the feeling of winning both individual state championships and a team state title during his sophomore season in 2006.

But after missing out on those joys a year ago, the talented senior gymnast from the Lincoln-Way High School co-op squad hopes that he can get himself and his teammates back to the pinnacle this weekend.

Lincoln-Way heads into Friday's 6 p.m. IHSA finals in Barrington as one of the favorites to capture the team title. Coach Skip Adamson's program has finished among the top five teams for four straight years.

On Saturday, six members of Lincoln-Way's squad will take part in the individual competition at the same site. The all-around and preliminaries take place in the morning with the finals scheduled for 7 p.m.

In 2006, Hutton tied for state titles in both the horizontal bar and parallel bars with teammate Brian Hulbert, who also won the all-around. It was the only time in state history that teammates had shared championships.

In addition, Lincoln-Way won its first team championship, improving one spot from 2005. But last year at state, Hutton placed second in the horizontal bar and third in the all-around while his team finished fourth.

Based on the results from last weekend's sectional meets, both Hutton and his teammates figure to challenge for championships at this year's state finals.

Hutton tied for the best state score on horizontal bar (9.65), was third-best mark on pommel horse (9.35), owned the fourth-best all-around total (55.45) and also had the fifth-best mark on vault (9.55). His score in still rings (9.2) also ranked among the top-10 in the state. But he got a 9.15 in floor exercise and only received an 8.55 on parallel bars in what turned out to be a very low-scored event in his sectional.

By comparison, he recently posted parallel bars scores of 9.7 in the SouthWest Suburban Conference meet and 9.55 at the Wheaton North Invitational and floor exercise marks of 9.5 in conference and 9.6 at Wheaton.

"Some of my events were really good and some of my events were really bad," said Hutton of his sectional showing. "Now, it's just about recouping and hitting sets and then going to state and winning."

The senior hopes to become the first Lincoln-Way gymnast to medal for three straight years at state. Hulbert won eight medals in 2005 and 2006 while Hutton has claimed four medals in the last two years.

Despite some of the surprisingly low scores, Lincoln-Way still posted a 162.0 sectional mark, which was the program's best sectional mark and second-best total in the state, just half a point behind York.

Not bad, considering that Lincoln-Way senior Phil Guinid, another member of the 2006 team, was still recovering from an ankle injury and wasn't able to help the squad out as much as he figures to this weekend.

Adamson said Lincoln-Way easily can improve upon its sectional score, raising the real possibility that the program can capture a trophy for the third time in four years.

"The top score in the state was 162.5 and we can make up at least that much from Dan alone, let alone some of the other scores," Adamson said. "So we've got a chance, as long as we stay healthy for a week."

Two other Lincoln-Way athletes, Isaac Kruspe and Ryan Mars, also turned in sectional scores that ranked them among the top 10 competitors in the state's five sectional meets.

Kruspe had the fourth-best mark in still rings (9.4) and was fifth-best in floor exercise (9.5) while Mars put up a score among the top 10 in the parallel bars (8.75). Hutton, Kruspe and Mars each qualified in all six events plus the all-around while Guinid and juniors Kyle Staley and Jeff Trost will be competing individually for Lincoln-Way.

"It was a good feeling to do so well at the sectional and we're going into state feeling confident," Mars said. "We know that there's a lot of little things that we can still catch up on."