Eighteen teams from around the state will meet in the Homestead field house on Saturday Jan. 16, for the annual Highlander Invitational hosted by the Homestead girls gymnastics team.

This will be the team’s first invite of the season, so it will prove to be a valuable experience for new members of the varsity team. With 18 teams attending, the Highlanders will be able to see what the competition is like outside of the North shore conference.

Homestead will be competing in the Olympic rotation which is the order of vault, bars, beam, and floor. Like most gymnastics teams, bars is an event of weakness for the Highlanders, but Ellie Trau, senior, and Emma Fox, freshman, hope to lead the bars team to a season high at the invite.

“It is always a goal for us to improve our scores every single meet, but we have not been able to do that yet this season. We are hoping that the Highlander will be a turning point for us,” Trau said.

Floor is a strong suit for the team, having three varsity floor gymnasts return from last season, and the addition of Fox into the lineup will help with the all around score of the team.

“I think floor is definitely my favorite event because you can really show your personality through your routine. In practice this week I have been really working on making sure my routine is as clean as possible,” Fox said.

The team is going to be up against some of the best teams in the state including the Arrowhead Warhawks and the Mukwonago-Kettle Moraine co-op team, and to prepare for the competition the gymnasts have been working on their fundamentals every day in practice and making each of their routines as clean as possible.

“The competition is super steep at this meet, and there are two different groups. We are in the white group and are ranked third, so hopefully we will be able to come out of the white division with a win,” Mackenzie Goebel, senior, said.

The team is aiming to score at least a 130, which would be their highest score of the season, but they are confident that they can do just that. Yesterday, Jan. 14, the team took on conference rival Whitefish Bay. Although it lost the meet, the team found a lot of promise from its performance.

Fox debuted two new skills at Thursday’s meet: a front handspring layout punch front on floor and a round off full dismount on beam. These skills will help bring up her overall scores in meets to come.

Vault, bars and floor all improved from previous meets, and their meet against Whitefish Bay showed a lot of potential for beam. Without falls in the routines, the team could get at least three routines to score a 9.0 or higher.

Saturday will be a test for the Highlanders, but it will also be a chance for the girls to show the rest of the state what they have been working on and the improvement that they have made since last season.

Gallery • 4 Photos

Elle Liniewski

Ellie Trau, senior, does a cast to handstand during warm-ups in the dual meet against Whitefish Bay.