Captain Bhavaani Nayak (12) took a deep breath and one last glance at her team and family anxiously cheering her on before mounting the beam. Lifting herself up four feet to find her balance at the top, one foot in front of the other, with a surface only four inches wide to stand on, she trained her focus. Swiftly, she leapt, spun, and flipped, the gold rhinestones of her leotard sparkling with every movement. When she finally dismounted in a back tuck off the beam, she knew she had nailed the routine as the gym erupted in applause, April 30.
She scored a 9.0 to capture first place on her Senior Night beam event and helped lead the team to an overall season-high score of 220.225, beating its previous season high by 0.2. This would be the last time Nayak would compete in the Westview gym, and one of the last times she would ever compete in gymnastics after 17 years of training.
“I’ve been doing gymnastics my whole life; I started off in parent-child classes when I was 18 months old,” she said. “I’m not the most sentimental person, but I did feel a little more sentimental that day, especially because it kind of marks the end of a chapter in my life, and I have to move on from that.”
Beam was Nayak’s highest-scoring event, although she also competed on vault and uneven bars. She said that despite the intimidating nature of performing acrobatic skills on the beam, the team was able to maintain Westview’s reputation as fierce competition. Nayak said this was partly due to guidance by Coach Diane Wavrik and Coach Linh Tran.
“Beam is the scariest event for a lot of girls to compete because you’re up four feet in the air on a four-inch-wide piece of wood, and you’re expected to do leaps and flips and acro on it,” Nayak said. “So, building up the confidence and consistency to compete is really, really big, and our coaches do a really good job of enforcing consistency and good technique.”
Since she sprained her ankle in February, the same month the team began preparing their routines, Nayak had to be cautious when returning to training, going back to the basics to master the skills that didn’t aggravate the injury.
“I was just working on skills that I know I can do without pain and drilling a bunch of those,” Nayak said. “In each practice, I would spend an hour or an hour and a half on just bars, trying to work on getting my skills to the level they needed to be. When I got to the point where I was able to compete, I would spend an hour on beam just making sure I would get my skills really consistent and really clean.”
To clean the routines, Nayak said the team focuses on two aspects: consistency and refinement. She said they will continue to build upon their season-high score because of their attention to detail, further refining their skills with each practice as they help one another.
“We’re judged on if we can do the skills and how well we can do them,” she said. “At this point, it’s all those little details, like the extra pointed toes or the extra straight legs or straight arms that make a difference. All those tiny details add up to deduct from our team score, but the girls are so focused on making sure they get them [right]. We’ve been trying to enforce watching each other’s routine and saying, ‘I noticed this [detail] in your routine’ because it’s harder to tell while you’re doing it.”
Nayak said she was happy to see the team’s hard work pay off in their second-to-last regular season meet before league finals and CIFs.
“We’ve just kept on improving since the beginning of this season,” she said. “Our team score is a little higher each time, and as a team captain, I feel so proud of my teammates and how much hard work and effort they’ve been putting in. They’ve been showing up to practices, and the results are showing.”
According to Lexi Stysis (12), the constant support that the small team of 13 gives one another strengthens not only their collaboration in practice, but also their performance on meet days.
“Even though we’re a smaller team, I think the bond that we have ultimately is what makes our team strong,” Stysis said. “That’s what sets us apart from other teams — the connections that we make and how it’s so easy to talk to everyone on the team, and everyone is there to support each other no matter what. Even if you make six mistakes in one performance, people are still going to be really supportive and proud of you for putting up your best.”
Stysis competed in vault, bars, and floor, earning 9.0, 9.375, and 9.325, respectively. Although it wasn’t her highest scoring event at this meet, Stysis said her strong suit is floor, as her prior dance experience aids the dance elements of the floor routine. Additionally, she said she’s been building her physical strength throughout the year in the acrobatic aspects of it. Still, the gymnasts have to adjust for the flooring, which differs from the spring floor used at club gymnastics meets.
“I competed in dance for about four years and I did ballet, jazz, lyrical, and tap,” she said. “A lot of the dance moves are really simple, but it’s important to execute them well. The hardest part is tumbling on the dead floor, which is just like this really thin mat, because normally in gymnastics you see the spring floor that they have that’s lifted and has springs under it.”
Stysis said this meet’s triumph was especially rewarding because it was on the Westview floor, which she won’t get a chance to compete on again.
“It was that was only my fourth time competing at Westview because I didn’t do gymnastics freshman or sophomore year, and it honestly meant more to me because I haven’t done it as much as other people have,” she said. “I was really happy about it. I think that was really fun to do and since it was a home, there were a lot of Westview people there and a lot of my friends were there. So I was really excited and happy to be able to show them how I’ve progressed throughout the season and at home one last time.”
Stysis said that the consistent support of the underclassmen throughout the season contributed to their success, especially on Senior Night. Now, as one of three graduating seniors, she said she hopes to continue the team’s momentum to win league championships and add to its three-year CIF win streak.
“The underclassmen were really focused on spending time with us and supporting us throughout the whole meet,” Stysis said. “Especially that meet, because it was so sentimental that we’re all leaving, everyone was super super supportive of each other. Even though we didn’t have our best performances on some events, we were still uplifting each other, which was probably how we got our highest score. We all managed to stick together, and I think that’s how we got our highest score of the season.”
