Aurora Greenmen senior Hannah Salgado wants to end her high school gymnastics career the right way. She will get that chance after earning her fourth consecutive individual berth to the Ohio High School Athletic Association Division I state gymnastics meet by finishing as the runner-up at the district meet, scoring 36.575 points last Saturday evening at the Berea-Midpark Middle School Sports Center.
“I think it is really cool,” Salgado said. “I think the last three years have been amazing but for my senior year I wanted to be able to get to the state tournament just because it is my final year and to go out with a bang would be nice.”
The Aurora senior will compete in her final state meet in the individual session at Hilliard Bradley High School in Franklin County on March 3 beginning at 11 a.m.
Salgado was an individual qualifier in the bars, vault and floor routine to take second place in the all-around and helped propel the Aurora gymnastics team to take fifth place at the district meet with 138.925 points, only two spots shy of advancing to the state meet as a team.
Although her team did not make the cut, Salgado will represent Aurora at her final state gymnastics meet.
“At the last couple of state meets there have obviously been nerves with how am I going to place and am I going to be consistent on events,” she said. “I think for this year I have the opportunity to go to the state meet and still do gymnastics.”
In the vault event, Salgado took first place by scoring 9.525 points.
According to her, the vault has been one of her strongest events for years and she proved that by capturing the top spot and edging out the runner-up by .25 points.
“I tend to have a lot of nerve and doubts going into other events where in vault I can really be aggressive on the event,” she noted. “I do not think about falling and to me it is a very simple thing to think about and it is just a couple of techniques here and there and a couple of moves I need to think about so it is just more simple than the other event for me.”
Salgado also qualified on the balance beam, finishing in sixth place with 9.175 points. She said that she felt she had a relatively clean performance on the balance beam but missed a connection on one of her leap passes.
“It was very frustrating because I had been struggling on that a little bit throughout the season but I am pretty proud of that beam because I just think there was a lot of pressure to do well for the team individually,” Salgado added. “I think I was able to handle that pressure well and use that confidence on my skills.”
Salgado’s final individual state berth came on her floor routine where she took sixth place, tallying 9.300 points.
She acknowledged that the floor routine is not one of her strongest events but felt it was a stark improvement from her floor routine performance at the Suburban League Meet on Feb. 10.
“I got out on a couple of passes and I had a lot of power directed in the wrong direction which took me out of bounds,” she said. “I tried to work on controlling landings and being clean and tight with my skills and also showing off my dance.”
Salgado did not qualify in the bars but still recorded 8.575 points to place 17th, which helped push her to finish in second place in the all-around.
According to Salgado, she tried a new routine at the beginning of the event to try and have a higher start value. Although she struggled on her new routine, she believed it was a risk worth taking.
“I did an uphill,” she said. “It is like the release on bars from low to high and I stopped once I did the kick just because I did not have enough momentum from the swing so that cost me a couple of 1/10ths there.”
Competing in her final state meet, Salgado will try and improve upon her fourth place finish from last year and will try and attack each event with a more relaxed mindset.
“I think just having fun, and it just sounds cliché, but I tend to do better when I am having fun and joking around with teammates and enjoying the moment,” she said.
