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Season Review: Gymnastics hit its stride — on and off mat

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The team. / Photo by: Sue Moss

The Whitman-Hanson Regional High gymnastics team had something to cheer about to end its season.

For the second straight year, the Whitman-Hanson Regional High gymnastics team capped its season with the Patriot League Sportsmanship Award.

“It means so much to us to have the other coaches in the league vote for W-H for this special award,” said second-year W-H head coach Alison Vance. “We were shocked and so thankful to receive it two years in a row. The girls are truly the kindest and most respectful group of girls I have coached in my 20-plus years. They are so happy to be a part of this league and love cheering on their fellow competitors.”

This season presented many changes and challenges for the Panthers. The toughest? They could only practice in their competition gym on weekends due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“We had to make use of the gym time to the best of our ability,” Vance explained. “We also got creative and used the Whitman Middle School gym on Wednesdays to go over routines and do some conditioning.”

The Panthers’ strategy worked. They started the season with a score of 123 and finished the winter with a mark of 125.6 in their last virtual meet.

Then at the Patriot League gymnastics championship meet, W-H finished in sixth place, missing fifth by 0.05.

“These girls made me so proud this year,” Vance said. “They always came to practice and meets prepared to give it 100 percent. They never gave up and improved each meet of the season. We had a few setbacks due to COVID, but the girls were so grateful to have a season, that they took those setbacks in stride. I was very impressed with their willingness to try new skills and improve the start value of their routines.”

Freshman Emma Mckeon paced the Panthers in that championship meet, placing sixth in the all-around. But her future with W-H is uncertain, as she was on loan from her club team.

“I know she had a blast this season and really wants to join us again next year,” Vance said. “I plan to speak with her club coach and my athletic director to find out if there is something we can work out next year.”

Mckeon wasn’t the only underclassman who impressed. Sophomore Riley Getchell took sixth on the beam at the championship meet, while freshman Khloe Drake was a contributor all season long.

“Riley had a great season, especially on beam, and continues to work hard,” Vance said. “She already has some exciting goals planned for next year. Khloe Drake improved her scores on beam and floor every meet. She did not compete in vault this year, but absolutely has the capability to. I am looking forward to seeing what new skills she comes up with next year.”

As for departures, senior captains Madison Scaccia and Savannah Poirier leave big shoes to fill — on and off the mat.

“Madison and Savannah not only had their best gymnastics seasons of their high school career, but they both have been the most positive role models for the underclassmen,” Vance said. “These girls are such well-rounded young ladies. They excel in athletics and in academics. They have positive attitudes and know how to encourage and support their teammates. They will be greatly missed next year.”

Vance said she hopes she can continue to build the program up.

“My plan last year was to speak with the eighth graders at both middle schools in June,” Vance said. “However, COVID made that impossible. I am hopeful I can have some sort of meeting with interested 8th graders at the end of this school year to drum up some attention and excitement. We also started a new Facebook page this year, so hopefully people in the community follow us and spread the word.”

Season Review: Gymnastics shows progress standing on its own


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The gymnastics team. / Photo by: Sue Moss

The gymnastics team improved its score in each meet.

It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish — and the Whitman-Hanson Regional High gymnastics team finished strong, in its first year standing on its own.

Despite an 0-12 overall record, the Panthers showed significant growth. They opened the winter with a score of 118 and closed it with a 126.

“Overall we were happy with our progress this season,” said first-year head coach Alison Vance, who won the Patriot League’s Coach of the Year. “Each meet our team score improved and personal bests kept getting higher and higher.”

The Panthers’ improvement on the score sheet can largely be attributed to four of their vaulters, who upgraded their difficulty as the season wore on.

“Our vault scores, for the beginning of the season, were averaging around a 32.6,” Vance said. “By the end of the season, we were averaging a 34.5.”

Senior captain Sarah Bombardier was a constant for W-H, finishing the winter with a team-high vault average of 8.65.

“She is a hard worker and a great leader,” Vance said of Bombardier, the team’s lone senior. “She is always willing to try anything to help improve the team score. We were so lucky to have her lead this team. She will be greatly missed.”

Junior Savannah Poirier proved to be a pleasant surprise for W-H. After taking her sophomore year off to do winter cheer, Poirier came back to gymnastics and averaged a team-high 8.2 on the floor.

“We were so thankful that she joined us,” Vance said of Poirier, who will captain the Panthers next season alongside rising senior Madison Scaccia. “Not only did she consistently put up our highest floor score, she filled a void we had on the bars. She upgraded her skills every week.”

Freshman Riley Getchell was another standout, concluding the season with an 8.15 average on the vault.
“She was very consistent on all of her events, especially the vault and beam,” Vance said. “She worked hard to upgrade her difficulty to improve her scores and it paid off. It is tough coming in as a freshman and competing in the all-around, but Riley is very experienced and did it well.”

Vance said her team’s strength was its positive attitude regardless of how the results fell, which led to them winning the Patriot League Sportsmanship Award.

“We were excited and thankful to receive this unexpected award,” Vance said. “We knew we were coming into this league behind the other teams that have been established with their coaching staff for so many years. We just kept our spirits up and worked on improving ourselves each week.”

While Vance said it’s going to be tough losing Bombardier, a four-year gymnast, she is looking forward to seeing how the program develops.

“The team is doing a good job of getting the word out to the eighth graders about our program,” Vance said, “so we are hopeful we can make up for the loss of Sarah by the start of next season. I am also very confident in the leadership of our new captains, Madison and Savannah.”

Season Preview: Gymnastics trending in the right direction

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The gymnastics team. / Courtesy photo

First-year head coach Alison Vance is looking to grow the gymnastics program.

For the Whitman-Hanson Regional High gymnastics team, there are a few things it wants to accomplish this winter.

“Our goal this season is to continue to grow our program, familiarize ourselves with the complex rules of high school gymnastics and have fun while doing it,” said first-year head coach Alison Vance, who inherits a club that finished 2-13 last season. “If we sprinkle in a few wins here or there, we will be thrilled.”

Vance has already begun chipping away at those goals. After Middleboro decided to split from it co-op with W-H, there was some fear that W-H wouldn’t be able to field a team after boasting just six girls last winter, only four of whom were set to return. However, after a grassroots push on social media and through word of mouth to spread knowledge about the program, 10 girls turned out for the team.

Senior captain Sarah Bombardier keys the Panthers this winter. She led the team with a 31.69 all-around meet average last season.

“We anticipate she will be [our high scorer again],” Vance said. “She is a former competitive gymnast who isn’t afraid to try new skills. She has a lot of natural gymnastics talent. 

Junior Madison Scaccia also captains the team.

“Madison will compete on floor, vault and beam again this year,” Vance said. “She has been working hard to make her routines more competitive.”

Freshman Riley Getchell and junior Savannah Poirier, who captained the cheerleading team
this fall, should also contribute on a nightly basis.

Vance said one of the tweaks she has made this year is rotating the all-around positions, which each team is allowed two at each meet.

“Generally, teams use the same two girls to fill those roles,” Vance said. “However, this year we have four girls that could potentially compete all-around. We are planning to switch it up from time to time to see if that helps improve our scores.”

Vance said regardless of how her team fares, her expectations won’t change.

“I expect the girls to always give 100 percent,” she said. “I expect them to be respectful of myself, their teammates and their competitors. I expect them to be positive and proud of their accomplishments, big or small.”

The Panthers are back in action Tuesday, Jan. 7 at 6:30 p.m. with a meet against Hingham and Marshfield at Massachusetts Gymnastics Center in Pembroke.

“I want to see these girls continue to work hard to upgrade their skills,” Vance said. “I want them to shake off the nerves of their first meet and come back from winter break ready to go.”

Q&A with new W-H gymnastics coach Alison Vance

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The Whitman-Hanson Regional High gymnastics team has a new coach. Alison Vance will take over the reins of the team this winter.

The Express caught up with Vance to get her outlook on the state of the program and find out how she aims to build it up.

Q: For those who don’t know, what’s your connection to the Whitman-Hanson Regional School District?

A: “I have been a seventh grade math teacher for 16 years at Whitman Middle School.”

Q: What’s your background in gymnastics?

A: “I was a former competitive and high school gymnast. I coached recreational gymnastics for six years, and I was the coach of the Excel competition teams at Mass Gymnastics Center in Pembroke for the previous 13 years.”

Q: What makes this new role a good fit for you?

A: “I am finally at a place in my life where I can dedicate the amount of time needed to coach this program. I stepped down from coaching the Excel teams last June. My twin daughters are 10 and can understand why I might be out of the house several nights a week. My husband is super supportive and able to help bring our daughters to their various activities while I am coaching. I am ready to take on this new challenge.”

Q: What do you feel like you bring to this program?

A: “I bring a lot of gymnastics coaching experience to this program. I also bring a lot of experience with building strong and supportive relationships with my students/gymnasts.”

Q: Participation is obviously a concern in gymnastics. How do you hope to grow the sport at W-H?

A: “This is a relatively new program for W-H and we have struggled to get students to participate. We have sent emails, posted on social media, made announcements at school, etc. One of the challenges is that there are not any gymnastics studios in the two towns to recruit kids from. We have to spread the word to the several different gyms in the South Shore area. Also, not all gymnastics studios are supportive of their gymnasts participating in high school gymnastics, which is a real shame. We are hoping that more students will get involved now that I am able to spread the word at Whitman Middle School.

“I have several close colleagues at Hanson Middle School that I am hoping to spread the word for us as well. I am hopeful that girls with gymnastics, cheerleading, tumbling or dancing experience will see how our team is improving each year and want to join us next year.”

Q: What are your short-term goals for the program?

A: “With such a small and young team, I am hoping that this is a year for us to spread the word about the program and encourage other girls with gymnastics experience to get involved going forward. I am hopeful that they will see the progress we are making in our league and want to join us in the future. For this year, I am hoping the veteran girls improve upon their scores from last year. For the freshmen, I want to see them become familiar with the very different rules of high school gymnastics and get as much competition experience as possible.”

Q: Five years from now, where do you want this program to be?

A: “Five years from now I would like to see this team have as many members as some of the other south shore teams. I would like us to be competitive in our league and be able to bring some gymnasts to the state individuals. I plan on sticking around as the coach for a long time, so I am hoping that will help make a difference, too.”

Season Preview: Gymnastics team goes co-op, works with new coach

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Sarah O’Shaughnessy takes the helm of the gymnasitcs team.

There are alot of changes with the gymnastics team this season at Whitman-Hanson Regional High School.

The first is the program is now a co-op with Middleboro, expanding on the two schools’ relationship that includes boys’ and girls’ swimming/diving teams.

Secondly, Sarah O’Shaughnessy is the new voice of the club, taking over for Rachel Cohen-Sferuzza, last season’s Patriot League Coach of the Year. O’Shaughnessy has an extensive gymnastics background and has been coaching since the age 14.

“My coach at Massachusetts Gymnastics [Center] asked me if I wanted to start coaching,” O’Shaughnessy expanded. “So, I was there for about seven years and I coached recreational and the bronze, silver and gold team.”

After residing in Florida for the past couple of years, O’Shaughnessy returned to Massachusetts in August.

“Someone reached out to the director of mygym, Tammy, and asked her if she would be interested and since she coaches Notre Dame [Academy of Hingham], she was like, ‘I think you should do it,’” O’Shaughnessy said.

The Panthers, who finished 9-4 last season with the help of regional qualifier Britney Blackstone, are led by senior captain Erin McCoy.

“You can tell she is a leader,” O’Shaughnessy said. “She’s very positive. She’s always there and very welcoming to Middleboro girls and she’s a very good person for the team.”

With teamwork key in gymnastics, O’Shaughnessy said she’s aiming to create it between the two schools. Six of the team’s girls come from W-H, while the other four come from Middleboro.

“It’s honestly about making it so the two teams are comfortable and knowing who their teammates are and everything and just have a good time, get to know each other,” O’Shaughnessy said.

O’Shaughnessy said she’s still trying to figure out where the team is strength-wise.

“They’re working together and there haven’t been any negative things, so,” O’Shaughnessy said.

Other players from W-H include captain Joelle Puopolo, Kate Pihl, Adrianna Caperello and Madison Scaccia.

The Panthers return to action Jan. 4 at 6:30 p.m. at Massachusetts Gymnastics Center in Pembroke for a league meet. 

“I’m more trying to get them to come together,” O’Shaughnessy said. “I know they didn’t think they were going to have a team at all, so I’m more trying to get them to come together.”

All-around leader takes the mat: Blackstone steps up for Panthers

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LEAP FORWARD: Britney Blackstone on the bars in a recent meet. In her first year with W-H gymnastics – the team’s second since its return – she is a an all-around team leader. / Photo by: Sue Moss

Through the Panthers’ first five meets – in which they are 8-1 – senior first-year member Britney Blackstone has posted the highest all-around score in each one.

Sophistication, maturity, hard work and incredible talent.

Those are the assets that senior Britney Blackstone has brought to the gym this winter in her first season as a member of the Whitman-Hanson Regional High gymnastics team.

“Her work ethic is incredible,” W-H head coach Rachel Sferruzza said. “She’s always working, you don’t have to ask her to do anything, so she is definitely a leader by example.”

Through the Panthers’ first five meets – in which they are 8-1 – Blackstone has posted the highest all-around score in each one.

“She has certainly stepped up in a role where she shows the other girls how hard work can really pay off,” Sferruzza said. “She kind of brings a life to our team which we didn’t have before, where the girls are really cheering her on. They haven’t had someone on the team do gymnastics this big before, so they get really excited for her and we’re all really proud of her.”

In W-H’s first meet of the season Dec. 19, Blackstone boasted a 34.7 all-around score as the Panthers swept the meet, to open the winter 3-0. The three wins matched the club’s win total of last season, which was its first year back from reinstatement.

While it may be Blackstone’s inaugural campaign donning a Panther uniform, she is no stranger to gymnastics. She first hit the floor when she was 6 years old at Kathy Corrigan’s School of Gymnastics and has competed ever since. Last year, she was sticking her routines at Head Over Heels Gymnastics before having a change of heart.

“I hadn’t done a high school sport yet and I was getting a little tired of my club sport,” Blackstone explained on her decision to join the Panthers this season. “It was a lot of time and stuff so I decided to quit that and start high school.”

Sferruzza said that while she didn’t know Blackstone personally last season, she did know of her, but she’s ecstatic she chose to join them this time around.

“Her mother was actually pretty instrumental in pushing for the program at Whitman-Hanson, and I know Britney was really contemplating doing it last year, although her club team was pretty strict and it would have been a lot of juggle along with keeping up her grades, she’s a good student as well,” the head coach said. “So, I understand that mental struggle in doing one versus the other.”

Sferruzza said as the winter’s gone on, they’ve added difficulty to Blackstone’s routines, which can be seen by her all-around marks, as she’s hit 35.4 or more in two of the past three meets.

“We’ve tweaked them a little bit to build up her scores,” Sferruzza explained. “We’ve worked hard on cleaning up her routines and making sure that she is hitting the elements and she has gotten better through the season.”

As for growth, Blackstone acknowledged she still has plenty of room for it as the season enters the homestretch.

“I want to pike my vault, to stick beam because that hasn’t been going so well and I want to get my double full back on floor,” Blackstone said.

Season Preview: Gymnastics team hits all the marks

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In its first meet of the season on Dec. 19 against Hingham, Marshfield and Pembroke/Silver Lake, W-H was out-numbered by anywhere from eight to nearly 20 girls per team. On the bars and vault, the Panthers only put up five participants out of a possible six, however that didn’t faze them at all, as they ended the night with a meet-high score of 125.1.

Although it may be small in numbers, the Whitman-Hanson Regional High gymnastics team, which is in its second year, has abundant talent in the areas that matter.

In its first meet of the season on Dec. 19 against Hingham, Marshfield and Pembroke/Silver Lake, W-H was out-numbered by anywhere from eight to nearly 20 girls per team. On the bars and vault, the Panthers only put up five participants out of a possible six, however that didn’t faze them at all, as they ended the night with a meet-high score of 125.1.

The performance gave W-H its first three wins of the season, after finishing last winter at 3-11. Second-year head coach Rachel Sferruzza said it’s certainly a balancing act at times deciding who to send out there, but it doesn’t hinder her team as much as one might think, in fact, it works in its favor more times than not.

“It does help play to advantages where everyone feels included,” Sferruzza said. “I can get everyone up on an event, I can switch some people in and out. We do have enough people where we can switch a few in and out this year, which we didn’t have a lot of that flexibility last year, but in a way, I think it helps. No one is fighting for a spot, everyone is gonna have a spot, so in that way it’s great it keeps a nice even keel, but in other ways it can stress things out because you have to be good, you have to get your routine, you feel like you you’re being depended on.”

While the number of participants, which is up slightly from last season, is out of the club’s control, Sferruzza, who was named the Patriot League Coach of the Year for 201617, said she believes one of her team’s biggest strengths is something it does have say over – its attitude.

“What I think helps the growth is that the team is a bunch of really positive, good girls,” Sferruzza said. “It doesn’t have to be girls, it could be guys too, but everyone is really positive and everyone really cheers for each other and they want each other to do well. It’s a very welcoming program and everyone is very approachable.”

Sferruzza said she feels like she’s more than just the head coach of the team.

“I like to think that I’m very approachable and they think of me as a good role model,” she said. “The big sister, someone fun that they can talk to and then they can put any stresses or worries away and bring their positive attitudes into the gym and use that to help them perform their best.”

Sferruzza acknowledged that being the only coach of 14 girls can be a bit of a daunting task, but her two senior captains – Kaileigh Gordon and Kaylee Torpey – make her job a whole lot easier.

“Kaileigh and Kaylee are really great,” Sferruzza said. “They’re both incredible, talented gymnastics [and] they’re both very organized, they’re very bright girls which helps. They’re able to lead the team whether it’s warm-ups, whether its setting up things like fundraising or fun activities like Secret Santa. “But, then when they’re here I can turn to them for anything. If I need them to do administrative work, management, I can do that if I need them to collect the group. So, the girls look at them and they listen to them.”

Along with Gordon and Torpey, Patriot League All-Star on the bars last season – sophomore Sarah Bombardier – will also give W-H a boost this season.

“She does all-around for us and is solid in every meet,” Sferruzza said. “She’s very experienced. She’s able to stay really focused during the meets.”

In the opener, Bombardier notched a 30.35 all-around score, second on the team to senior newcomer Britney Blackstone, who boasted a 34.7. Blackstone, despite being a first-year Panther, is no stranger to gymnastics having competed on a club team.

“She came here with a lot of experience in high-level meets and brought a lot of high-level skills,” Sferruzza said.

W-H will be back in action Friday, Jan. 5 at 6:30 p.m. at Massachusetts Gymnastics Center in Pembroke.