Caron, NFA win ECC titles

Fitch/Waterford senior Allie Black knew she had her work cut out for her from the start as she glanced over from the floor exercise to see Killingly junior Christine Caron compete on her opening apparatus, the bars.
Caron nailed her routine and the judges responded, giving Caron the top individual score of the night, a 9.65. She used that momentum to capture her second- consecutive Eastern Connecticut Conference individual gymnastics championship. Caron finished with a 37.4, while Black finished with a 36.95 on Friday night at Deary’s Gymnastics.
As happened last year, Caron’s individual win didn’t result in an ECC Championship meet title for the Redgals. Instead, NFA walked away with its fourth title in five years, 137.85 to Killingly’s 133-point total. The Fitch/Waterford cooperative actually finished with the highest points total (139.3), but wasn’t allowed to compete for the team title as it didn’t meet league criteria for the season.
“She’s awesome on bars,” Black said of Caron’s routine to open the championship meet. “There’s no competition there. I give her props — that’s a sick routine. I really enjoy it; I wish I could do it.”
The key for Caron on that bars came from a stunt that she’s been working on for awhile but has just started hitting consistently.
“I’ve been trying to get that release move for so long now and I finally got it,” Caron said. “I was having trouble actually making it in meets, but I finally started hitting it every meet.”
The release move, as described by Caron, is when she goes backwards around the upper bar to a handstand, let’s go, and then catches the lower bar.
Caron also finished first in the beam with a 9.3, was second in the vault (9.35) and tied for second on the floor (9.1).
“I’m happy, I just came out and tried my best as usual and whatever happens, happens — it’s in the judges’ hands from there,” Caron said.
Kathrin Lewis of Tourtellotte was third with a total of 36 points.
NFA won the championship thanks to Courtni McFarlane’s fifth-place finish, a sixth-place tie by Allie Sullivan and a seventh by Cindy Briggs.
“Part of me expected this, part of me wasn’t sure,” NFA coach Sue Hopkins-Terrell said of the title. “Fitch/Waterford has a heckuva group, but we’ve been pretty loose the past couple of days thanks to some goofy things we’ve been doing at practice.”
The Fitch/Waterford girls fully expected to compete as a team coming in, but were disallowed from doing so as they didn’t compete against NFA over the course of the season and had just one meet versus Killingly, thus not meeting the league’s criteria for eligibility.
“We don’t follow the (ECC) rules,“ Black said. “It’s hard being a gym that isn’t at the school. Our coaches do so much for us. They do it on their own, they’re not getting paid for this — our high schools don’t have a budget. We buy everything, like our leotards. We were fortunate just to come here and compete as individuals.”
Fitch/Waterford coach Carl Cavrell said he thought that the ECC athletic directors had agreed to relax the rules and allow the co-op to compete, as a team, in the ECC championship.
“That’s how the girls and I understood it. Whether it was real or not, I wasn’t a part of that (athletic director’s decision), I wasn’t in the loop,” Cavrell said by phone Friday night as he didn’t attend the championship.
“It’s my personal decision (to not meet the league criteria),” Cavrell said. “I have scheduling issues and it was our choice not to do, but we understand the consequences and if that’s the decision of the ADs, that’s fine.”