4A gymnastics: Niwot’s Curry repeats as all-around champion
THORNTON – Mia Curry’s high school gymnastics career continues to unfold ahead of schedule.
The Niwot junior won the Class 4A all-around state championship as a sophomore in 2019, surpassing her personal expectation of competing for the top spot as an upperclassman. On Saturday, it was revealed that Curry’s performance while leading the Cougars to a third-place team finish on Friday was good enough for a second all-around gold.
Curry’s repeat bid at Thornton High School wasn’t an easy one, as 4A team champion Elizabeth’s Bethany Breikss (36.675) and Standley Lake’s Tessa Grudle (36.6) gave her a run for her money. But Niwot’s star gymnast posted a 36.9 all-around score to edge her talented competitors and hold on at the pinnacle of her classification.
“This one, I think I was actually more surprised than the last one,” Curry said. “It’s a different kind of surprised because last time, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m a sophomore, it’s improbable because I haven’t had as much experience as other people. But this one, there was such a great amount of competition between all the girls that were in the top eight. It was crazy, so it was really surprising that I got to compete against all these girls that are just as good, if not better, than me and I was able to overcome and fight to get that first place.”
In Saturday’s individual events, Curry won the balance beam and uneven bars with scores of 9.45 and 9.05, respectively, and was top five in the other two events. She won individual floor championship last season and now has three individual golds in her prep career.
Helping her finish runner-up in the all-around, Breikss won the 4A vault individual title with a score of 9.35. It was her first individual title.
“I’m just so amazed that I could be here in the first place, so I wasn’t even worried about what everybody else was doing and just focused on doing what I needed to do,” Breikss said. “With COVID, we weren’t sure if we’d even get a season at all. But we got to be here through everything. And I got the championship in vault. After getting third last year, I really brought it so I could get first.”
Grudle won the floor routine individual championship with a score of 9.625. She was second in both beam and bars.
