Last year’s gymnastics season left a bit of a sour taste in everyone’s mouth at Hampshire Regional.
Despite winning the league in 2020, there was no Western Mass championship because of the pandemic. Heading into this year, there were more questions than answers about how the team would respond after an unusual year prior.
Before the championship meet, Raiders coach Lisa Anthony stressed that the winner of Western Mass. would be the team who came in and had the best day on beam and bars, the two events her team has struggled most with all season.
“Whoever wins Western Mass. is going to have to come in and have a good day,” she said a couple of weeks ago after the team’s nail-biter win over Westfield and Agawam. “Whoever’s on, whoever can stick beams and bars.”
She didn’t need to worry – the dynamic duo of Hailey Raffa and Tyler Hetu came in and put on a strong performance on both events, leading the Raiders to the Western Mass. team title. It’s been several decades since Hampshire has last walked away with a Western Mass. title, but they were finally able to pull it off on Saturday.
“(The team) was ecstatic, because we’ve been trying to win for a few years now … we always come in third. We’ve come in third consistently for like 10 years now,” Anthony said.
Hetu had an impressive performance on bars, scoring 8.7 and winning the event, while Raffa finished in second on the beam with a score of 8.650. And then, per usual, the two dominated on both floor and vault; Raffa won the vault event with a score of 9.175, and Hetu and Raffa went 1-2 on the floor: Hetu won the event with a 9.25, and Raffa was right on his heels with her performance worth 9.15 points.
But even with their impressive routines, Anthony still nitpicked some of the little details — after all, her team wasn’t perfect.
“I know Westfield beat us on beam,” she said when asked about her team’s second-place finish in the event. “We stayed on the beam, we just weren’t as neat as we usually are, form-wise.”
It’s that attention to detail and laser focus that was one of the reasons that Hampshire finished this season undefeated, topping off the stellar year with the Western Mass. title. Though some of their meets were close, there was always somebody for the Raiders who pulled through when they needed it most. That happened again at Saturday’s meet, when Hampshire gymnasts Skyler Duda and Hannah Wodecki also placed and contributed to the team’s win. Duda placed fifth on floor with a score of 8.80, while Wodecki tied for second on vault with 8.575.
Going into the meet, Anthony said she told her team to just stay focused, but to have a good time.
“(I told them) to focus on your event, to have confidence in yourself and your routines, do the best you can … and if you mess up or fall, just brush it off. We’re here to have fun and support the other teams as well as ourselves.”
It was that mentality that also led to them winning the Sportsmanship Award, the first time they’ve earned the honor since 2015. Between that award, the Western Mass. crown, and the undefeated year, it’s a satisfying way for Hampshire’s season to come to a close.
“It’s an incredible feeling. I feel like we deserve it because we’ve worked so hard, the kids have worked so hard,” Anthony said. “I’ve been there a long time, so it was a nice ending to a great two seasons. I feel like we accomplished a lot. And we had other teams that definitely had the potential in the past, but we could never just hit it all right on one day.”