HJ Sports Blog

A season-high in points and a marriage proposal made Friday’s meet against Rockford memorable for the Delano gymnastics team

By Matt Kane
Sports Editor
DELANO — It’s not often gymnastics judges are brought to tears, but it happened Friday night in Delano.
Delano certainly was impressive in scoring a season-high (and maybe record-high) 138.85 points in a Wright County Conference (WCC) win over Rockford (120.80 points), but it wasn’t anything any gymnast did that opened the judicial tear ducks. It’s what Dave Vogel, a mountain of a man, did while the Tigers and Rockets were waiting for the final results.

With the Tiger gymnasts gathered around, Vogel performed the most memorable floor routine of the night, when, with teenage screams acting as background music, he genuflected to one knee and asked Delano coach Allison Holmes to merry him.

Holmes said “yes,” and those teenage Tigers and surely some fans screamed again in approval.

“I was totally blind-sided,” Holmes said. “The girls didn’t know, and I was very surprised when he proposed. I had no clue.”
Emotions were plentiful all night for everyone in the old high school gymnasium. Before the meet began, seniors Shauna Pinoniemi and Katelyn Knudson were honored, and the announcement of Delano’s score, following the marriage proposal, had the Tigers and their fans screaming with excitement.
Delano junior Dabrina Rolf cleaned up. She won all four events, and was the all-around champion with 35.675 points. Her high score of the night was a 9.35 on the floor exercise. In the other three events, Rolf scored a 9.175 on vault, an 8.70 on beam, and an 8.45 on bars.

Rolf was one of three Tigers to compete in all four events.

Senior Katelyn Knudson finished second with 34.60 points, and junior Kendra Burke was third with 33.975 points.

Knudson finished second to Rolf in the floor exercise (9.125), beam (8.575) and bars (8.30, and was fourth on vault (8.60).

Burke, in a rare all-around night, scored an 8.975 on floor, an 8.425 on beam, an 8.40 on vault, and an 8.175 on bars.

No Rockford gymnasts qualified for the all-around.

The 138.85 points proved to Holmes that her team is still getting better, and that’s what she wants to see this late in the season.

“We had a couple meets where we went down a little, but we’ve gone back up now,” she said. “We are refocused, and have moved back up. It’s nice to have it where we are not up-and-down with our score.
“It’s exciting for the girls, coming into sections in two weeks, to bump that score back up to the best. It’s exciting.”

Knudson and Shauna Pinoniemi were the two Delano seniors honored before the meet.
Both looked back at how far the Tiger gymnastics program has come in their tenures at Delano.

“We made a lot of improvements, especially on bars,” said Pinoniemie, who scored a 7.30 on bars Friday night. “We’ve always been good at floor, but we are better at beam and bars (than we were).”

Knudson said their is still work to be done.

“We’ve had a sign on the wall that says “140” for, like, four years. Once we get 140, we are taking it down, because we haven’t gotten it yet. We were hoping we would get close at this meet,” she said.

Delano has one more regular-season meet to reach 140 points. Tuesday, the Tigers go to Glencoe-Silver Lake, with hopes of returning home with an undefeated 10-0 record, and a WCC championship trophy.

Delano 137.10, Waconia 132.725
WACONIA — Delano knocked off Waconia 137.10-132.725 Jan. 29 at Waconia High School.

Waconia’s Alexanna Gluck won two events and the all-around competition, but Delano was the better overall team.
The Tigers won the vault, bars and floor exercise. The Wildcats won the beam.

Dabrina Rolf won two events and finished second in the all-around. Rolf scored the high score of the night when she was awarded a 9.20 on the floor exercise. She also won the bars with an 8.725. Rolf’s second-place all-around total was 34.850. She scored an 8.450 on both the vault and beam.

Gluck claimed the other two events. She won the vault with a 9.10, and the beam with a 9.0. Gluck’s all-around total was 35.125. Gluck’s other two scores were an 8.750 on floor and an 8.275 on bars.

Katelyn Knudson was Delano’s other all-around competitor. She finished third with 33.80 points. Knudson scored an 8.90 on floor, 8.60 on vault, 8.40 on bars, and 7.90 on beam.

Anna Wischmann finished second in the two events she competed in. Wischmann scored an 8.750 on the vault, and an 8.525 on the bars.

Kendra Burke also claimed a second place for the Tigers. She scored an 8.70 on the beam.