WESTHAMPTON – Before she stepped onto the floor for her last event on Tuesday evening, Hampshire Regional senior Hailey Raffa ran up to teammate Tyler Hetu and did a quick chest bump. With all other events finished and everyone’s eyes on her, Raffa pulled off the best floor routine of the night to raucous cheers, scoring her highest point total with a 9.00 to clinch the all-around title.
“It’s a little nerve-wracking, I’ll be honest, but it’s really nice when everyone cheers for you,” Raffa said. “It made me get a lot more confidence when everyone was just there to support me. It was really rewarding.”
Behind Raffa and her team’s strong efforts, Hampshire won its first gymnastics meet of the season with a 133.00 score ahead of second-place Westfield (124.25) and third-place Chicopee Comp (104.35).
Raffa nearly swept the individual events, winning the bars (8.5) and vault (8.75) in addition to floor to give her the all-around title with a score of 34.75. Hetu was close behind her in the all-around, placing second with a 33.15 score, and Tessa Burke completed the Raiders’ all-around sweep with a score of 31.35.
It was an impressive performance from the Raiders in their first meet of the season, despite some nerves about whether they were quite ready for competition.
“Last week, we were really nervous going into the meet, we didn’t think we were going to do as well. Then we had a mock meet yesterday and that pumped everybody up because they nailed every routine,” Hampshire coach Lisa Anthony said. “They were so pumped and so good. I was like ‘If we can repeat yesterday and do that today, we’ll be golden.’ We almost did that.”
Though there are a lot of younger gymnasts on the team – Raffa, Samantha Moran and Katie Sullivan are the team’s only seniors, and Hetu the lone junior – there are a lot of athletes who have stepped up early. Burke should be an all-around threat all season along with Avery Tudryn, and Raffa and Hetu are typically near the top of the leaderboard in their events.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was sophomore Maddie Holister, who was lights out on the balance beam. She took the roof off the gym with a backward flip in her routine and scored first place in that event with an 8.80.
It’s a promising start for the Raiders, who are looking to defend both their league and Western Mass. titles this season.
“I think a lot of it is those younger gymnasts are very eager, too, and that keeps all of us on our toes,” Hetu said. “We’re all striving for those competition spots and getting later in the lineup, which honestly just helps our gymnastics as a whole. But it’s not necessarily totally competitive in that sense, because we all want us to succeed.”