This year Camas High Schools gymnastics team is working extremely hard to defend their state championship. With last years win the team is under a lot of pressure to keep their title. The team is very strong this year and have a great group of girls.

Last year there were around 20 girls on the team. Now that they are winners more people were aware of the team and decided to join, leading the team to 40 members. Since the team is so big the coaches decided to be the first gym team to create an Exhibition team or could be considered Junior Varsity. Still, with these different placements, the team is huge so there are four captains this year.

The four co-captains are Madison Martin and Joy Marsh, both seniors, Lizzy Wing and Anika Affleck both Juniors. And there are two coaches, Carol Willson, and Tricia Hoppa. These women work so hard to get the team to where they are now, and they volunteer their own personal time to coach this group of girls.

Carol Willson has been coaching the team for 5 years now. During her time, the girls have not lost any competitions other than the state competition. Last year, the girls did win state so hopefully, they are able to keep that title this year. Coach Carol has been an amazing asset to the team, and the girls hope to keep her as long as possible.

This year with the team so big the coaches were able to pick a selection of the girls to give the highest scores to the team. So the team is getting amazing scores. The team has meets almost every Saturday. At the first meet the team came in first all-around with a score of 174, and at the second meet, “we came in first all-around with a 180.05, and our goal was a 178!” says Tricia.  Congratulations to these girls for doing so well this early in the season.

Because of all the snow days, they had to push Districts back to Saturday, February 17, where the girls took many firsts and placed first in the team score.

The girls plan on defending their state title this year and have set some goals on how they will do this. Coach Carol states, “other teams are practicing Monday-Friday 7-9, our girls need to step it up and focus if we want to win again”.  The Camas team practices 4 days a week so they are relying on their talent and teammates to get them the win. Madison Martin Senior says “teamwork makes the dream work!”