Longtime WHS gymnastics coach Joanne Hewins watches Angela Bonavita perform on the balance beam. (File photo by Chris Putz)
WESTFIELD – 78-0. Six straight western Mass. championships. Nine in the last eleven seasons.
Life is good for the gymnastics program at Westfield High School, a program which looks to remain just as strong in 2013 as they were last fall.
Coach Joanne Hewins isn’t allowing the immense shine from all of the program’s championship hardware to obscure her vision of the task at hand this preseason because, well, she hasn’t been there yet.
“I never start at the same time as the team,” said Hewins, who is set to join practice this coming Tuesday. “But the bulk of the team is returning.”
The bulk in question consists of 30 athletes, as the Bombers lost only three to graduation last spring, and return a collection of talent that vaulted over the competition last year en route to another perfect campaign.
Due to their being no boys division for gymnastics in the western half of the Commonwealth, Hewins coaches a mixed-gender squad along with every other school in the region. What separates her team is her compassionate managing of her athletes, from preseason up until the final event of the state competition.
“The ideal number for a gymnastics team is sixteen to eighteen athletes,” she said. “But I carry high twenties, low thirties. I don’t cut athletes. Never have, never will.”
These massive rosters have contributed into making her teams into immovable objects atop the western Mass. rankings for the past half decade.
Westfield’s Taryn Hamel competes on the balance beam. Hamel has been instrumental in the Bombers’ unbeaten championship run. (File photo by Chris Putz)
“At this moment, I don’t think Gateway (Regional High School) has a coach,” Hewins said. “When I started coaching here 20 years ago, there were eighteen teams in the region.”
When asked of what could be blamed for the drop in programs, Hewins didn’t pirouette around the question.
“It’s not for a lack of interest,” she said. “It’s just such a specialty sport, you need coaching familiar to the sport, and it’s hard to find coaches who are available at 2:30 in the afternoon.”
Hewins is a third grade teacher at Southampton Road School, where she taught many of her current athletes, and loves coming to practice everyday. She believes this team has the potential to keep the winning tradition going in 2013.
“Taryn Hamel, Angela Bonavita, Maeve Reynolds, and Sarah Hogan will be big for us this year,” Hewins said. Of the four, all with the exception of Hogan, a junior, are seniors, and it is that level of experience that will keep the Bombers flying high.
“Maeve has been competing with Roots (Hewins’ summer team) and she placed top in the state, and second in the New York/New England region.”
Hewins’ boys on the team are no slouches either, and she believes the floor duo of Josh Burrage and western Mass. champion Brendan Whitman will factor heavily into the team’s success.
Having been involved in gymnastics her entire life, from her own time as a high schooler in Westfield, to a four-year career at Springfield College, no one is more aware of what it takes to be a success in gymnastics. She believes her girls and boys can pick up where they left off.
“Based on our returns, we should be scoring in the same range,” she said. “Minnechaug will be good again. (Chicope) Comp will be strong. They may have some spectacular freshmen. But I think our scores will be consistent.”
