Boys Gymnastics: Glenbard West’s Alex Diab shines, but Downers North wins

Updated: April 5, 2012 10:46PM

There isn’t a freshman in the state this year who can dominate a sport as much as Glenbard West’s Alex Diab.

Competing in the first major high school invite of his young career, Diab won five events as well as the all-around with a eye-popping 57.150, but the Hilltoppers were still left looking up at Downers Grove North.

The Trojans edged Glenbard West, 148.45 to 147.65, to win Thursday’s 10-team Canino Invitational at Hinsdale Central.

“I felt like I did good. I went six-for-six with all my routines,” Diab said. “I’m still just trying to clean up my routines and get less deductions.

Diab scored between a 9.3 and 9.7 on his events and won everything except for vault, where he still recorded a 9.45. His top score came on high bar where he registered a 9.7.

“It was probably one of my top three [performances] of the season,” Diab said. “It was a fun experience. I got to see a lot of the guys I used to compete against in club.”

Luke Wychocki placed second in the all-around with a 53 and Strah Sopcic was fifth with a 46.65 to lead the Trojans to the title. John Schubert added a 9.4 on floor for the winners.

“What we did was about the best we could do,” Downers Grove North coach Al Bekkedal said. “We had some events we could’ve done a bit better on and hopefully we can clean it up because it’s going to take more than a 148 to get where we want to be.”

While always looking at getting better, the Trojans did plenty of good things on Thursday.

“Parallel bars did a lot better than they had been doing and the floor team looked good,” Bekkedal said. “The pommel team added some difficulty and we had some good sets on rings too.”

Hinsdale Central’s Tyler Leahy, the defending state vault champion, edged Diab with a 9.5.

© 2013 Sun-Times Media, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be copied or distributed without permission. For more information about reprints and permissions, visit www.suntimesreprints.com. To order a reprint of this article, click here.