By Bella Munson, UW News Lab
The Ballard High School gymnastics team became the first Beavers team to win a Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) state championship last month, and is the first Seattle public school to win a state gymnastics title. The achievement was the culmination of a healthy team environment and years of hard work from the 11 students on the team, head coach Stephanie Gundel said.
Eight girls competed in the state meet but all 11 contributed to the success, Gundel said.
One of the primary things that makes high school gymnastics, especially at Ballard High School, different from the club gymnastics experience is the focus on team over individual success, Gundel said.
“I would say we’re very team-forward, we’re very team focused. Everybody is trying to better themselves for the good of the team. And it’s not necessarily intentional on my part, it’s just very natural … it’s a lot more how the individual goals factor into the team goal,” Gundel said.
The team focuses on goal setting and how individuals contribute to build a strong team, Gundel said.
”We’re not just telling them that they can contribute because we want to make them feel good,” Gundel said. “Everybody has a role on the team, and everybody can contribute to the success… and I think making sure that everybody feels empowered to contribute is important.”
Assistant coach Hannah Hudson-Walks praised the contributions of every student athlete on the team.
“I think each and every gymnast on the team is such an incredible person. And I think without the specific combination of each of these amazing girls we couldn’t have made it,” Hudson-Walks said. “We can coach all we want but really it’s up to the girls and how much hard work they put in and what they’re trying to achieve.”
As a senior captain, gymnast Dylan Kelly set goals for herself built off that team dynamic. Kelly joined the team as a sophomore through out-of-district eligibility because the small private school she attends doesn’t have gymnastics.
Kelly said she had admired the previous captains and her coaches for their ability to use positivity to lift the entire team up together.
“My goal was to make sure to continuously be positive, even on hard days. And I’m not going to say that I did that 100% of the time. Like everyone has hard days … I also think that’s an important part of being a leader, showing that you make mistakes too, you have hard days too,” Kelly said. “But I really worked to be a positive role model and try to embody what the girls before me embodied.”
Kelly is known for her pep talks ahead of routines, said multiple teammates, always cheering, giving hugs after a routine, and helping people with their face tattoos and glitter.
“Dylan is an amazing teammate… She is such a team player. She wants everyone to succeed… she just makes everybody feel better about themselves and …. has been really important to the team over the last three years,” Gundel said.
The supportive team mindset extends throughout the coaching staff, said Mari Puckett, a sophomore in her first year with the team. Assistant Coach Pamela Styborski wouldn’t let the students say anything negative about themselves at practice. Puckett found it annoying at first, she said, because it can be easy to be frustrated with yourself in gymnastics, but now recognizes how important it is.
“Even when you want to say negative things, a negative mindset will never lead to something positive. So you have to make sure that you’re positive and that you have that confidence, because if you don’t think you can do it you probably can’t,” Puckett said.
On the road to the WIAA 1A/2A/3A State Gymnastics Championship, Ballard was undefeated through the regular season. To start the postseason they won the Metro League Championship. Then they won the district championship for the first time ever.
This gave the team a lot of confidence going into their final meet of the season, Kelly said. But as a senior captain, Kelly said she knew it was important to temper expectations and not put so much pressure on themselves that nerves got the best of them.
“There was this idea that this year it’s more likely that we’ll succeed so we really need to be confident in ourselves and we need to trust that we’re going to do as well as we can do, … but it’s also this idea that it’s okay if we don’t win… because gymnastics really is a mental sport,” Kelly said.
Through the season, beam was the team’s strongest event. But on the first event, in the first session, the day didn’t start off that way.
Senior captain Viviana Corsini is one of the team’s strongest beam competitors, Gundel said, but she fell on the first skill of her routine. She did well after that first fall, she said, but it wasn’t enough to qualify for the event finals.
“It was really disappointing… really sad, but it was still nice to watch the rest of the team bounce back,” Corsini said. “Especially because our whole team kind of was a little shaky on that first event, but we came back throughout the rest of the meet.”
Gundel and her team knew that one mediocre event was not going to determine the outcome, but also that it’s easy to spiral after a bad event. The team went to floor next and performed well, Gundel said. The resiliency followed the team to vault and then bars where Gundel said “they just hit everything.”
After completing their session, Gundel asked for the team scores and she said she knew her team had beaten Bainbridge High School, their closest competition in the first session. It wasn’t until Bainbridge was announced as the second-place team and Ballard was the only school yet to be called that the team knew they had won.
The moment was surreal, Puckett said, leaving coaches and players speechless with smiles plastered across their faces. Corsini forgot all about the earlier struggles.
“I was really sad I couldn’t make it to [beam] finals, but the moment we won I wasn’t even thinking of that. I was just so proud and happy for the team,” Corsini said.
Through their scores on the first day of state team championship competition, five Beavers qualified for individual event finals the next day.
Brooke Adkins qualified for bars and took second place in the state. Caitlyn Adkins and Claire Spinosa tied for fourth in the same event. Adkins went on to place seventh on beam while Spinosa finished 13th on vault. Kelly tied for sixth on vault. Puckett finished 10th on beam but it was her top placement on the floor routine that won her an individual state championship.
Puckett said she wasn’t expecting to become Ballard’s first-ever state floor champion, and it was even less expected because ahead of her routine Puckett was distracted by her improperly fitting leotard and the nerves were getting to her.
“I really wanted to do well, I have a very high standard for myself when it comes to floor,” Puckett said.
Once it was time to perform her routine she let go of the nerves.
“I was just like I’m going to have fun, I’m going to do my best,” Puckett said. “And then I just had to leave it in the hands of the universe.”
What made the win even better were the people she got to celebrate with, she said.
“I could have never asked for such an amazing support system and people this season,” Puckett said. “They were so excited for me which made me even more excited. And just knowing that they were there for me from the start and that they were there for me when I won was just so amazing.”
For both Hudson-Walks and Gundel, winning state was a remarkably full-circle moment in their gymnastics careers.
Gundel did high school gymnastics all four years growing up in Bellingham and won multiple state championships. She took the job at Ballard in 2003 at just 23 years old. Since taking over a struggling program she has slowly built up the team’s success but it didn’t match up to the success she was used to in high school, Gundel said.
“I keep coming back because I love it no matter what the results, but it did feel very satisfying,” Gundel said. “Just having come from that background, it’s kind of full circle to now have a team that I coach be state champs.”
Hudson-Walks has served as Gundel’s assistant coach at Ballard for nine years and grown the program alongside her.
“It felt like this big build up of all this effort and working to hone our coaching, to help our gymnasts do their best … So making it there and having the girls put in all this work, I was just so excited for them and proud of them,” Hudson-Walks said.
Before joining the coaching staff, Hudson-Walks began her own gymnastics journey as a freshman at Ballard with no prior gymnastics experience. She competed for the Beavers all four years. It was in Hudson-Walks’ 2016 senior season that the team made it to state for the first time.
“I remember how excited we were just to make it to state as a team,” Hudson-Walks said. “So then to keep raising our goals and raising the bar for ourselves, it’s been really exciting to be on that journey.”
The win was exciting, Kelly said, but bittersweet. She knew it was the end of her season and gymnastics career – one that began as soon as she could walk.
“Winning state is an amazing thing and it’s something that I’m so proud that we were able to accomplish. But it’s also that this was our goodbye to gymnastics, … so that is what was kind of surreal for me, and I still feel like it hasn’t clicked yet,” Kelly said.
Leaving behind some of her closest friends will be difficult, she said, but is also part of why gymnastics has been so rewarding.
“Years from now, I’m not going to remember where I placed,” Kelly said. “I’m just going to remember how I felt in gymnastics and all of my teammates.”
Featured photo: The 2024-2025 Ballard High School gymnastics team poses for a team photo. In the front row, from left to right, sits senior captains Caitlyn Adkins, Dylan Kelly, Viviana Corsini and Brooke Adkins. In the back stands Aspen Pfeiffer, Heloise Priolet, Mari Puckett, Claire Spinosa, Carli Pecoraro, Ella Carter and Ruby Stan. Photo provided by Stephanie Gundel, photographed by Adam Lu.
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