High school gymnastics state meet: A half-century later, four athletes to remember

Champions will be honored when the girls high school gymnastics state meet convenes Friday and Saturday at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium.

Not just the girls who win over the weekend, but also the champions who came before.

The meet reached its milestone 50th birthday last season. This year, the Minnesota Girls Gymnastics Coaches Association (MGGCA), in conjunction with the Minnesota State High School League, plans to recognize past state champions. In addition to being invited to the pre-meet dinner and awards ceremony Thursday, past winners will walk, en masse, at the front of the meet’s Parade of Champions introductions before each day’s competition.

Bringing back some of the most notable gymnasts of the past presents an opportunity for reflection about an event many say now was more life-changing than they realized. Here are the stories of four past champions who made bold marks.

Gymnastics was not Mindy Myhre Shannon’s original plan.

She became one of the most successful gymnasts in Minnesota State High School League history, but growing up, Myhre Shannon envisioned herself as a hockey player, like her four older brothers.

“I wanted to be just like them,” she recalled. “But girls hockey wasn’t a thing yet.”

There were no girls high school teams and scant few youth programs. Girls who wanted to play hockey had few options.

So Myhre Shannon flipped her allegiance to gymnastics. And the rest is MSHSL history.

Myhre Shannon is one of the most successful high school gymnasts the state has known. Despite graduating 30 years ago, she remains the only gymnast to win four consecutive all-around championships, while competing for Mahtomedi from 1991 to ’94. She won 13 individual state titles and was a member of the team for three of the Zephyrs' eight titles in nine years from 1985 to ′93.

She was honored for her success in 2022, when she was named to the MSHSL Hall of Fame, going in with a class of 12 that included her high school coach, Debbie Driscoll, who is still the head coach at Mahtomedi, and Cretin-Derham Hall’s Joe Mauer. Myhre Shannon is also a member of the Mahtomedi High School Hall of Fame.

Now, she’s a married mother of two elementary school-aged sons, Hans, 11, and Haakon, 9. Her husband is Troy Shannon, who was a tight end at North Dakota State in the late ’90s.

Myhre Shannon had a stellar career at the University of Minnesota, being named MVP of the Gophers’ 1998 Big Ten championship team and earning three Academic All-Big Ten honors.

These days, she is director of business development for Muscle Activation Techniques, a Colorado-based firm that uses massage techniques and hands-on therapy to “correct muscular imbalances that affect movement and function.”

Myhre Shannon got involved with Muscle Activation Techniques after it helped relieve the chronic back pain she had after years of gymnastics.

“I remember realizing that gymnasts don’t have to live in chronic pain to be successful,” she said.

For all she’s accomplished, Myhre Shannon said her greatest achievement is becoming a mother, but she admits she’s traded the anxiety of competition for a different sort.

“It’s way more stressful watching your children in sports,” she said, laughing. “We’re just letting them find their happy place with athletics.”

Bonnie Berning, as she was known then, had fortunate timing at a gymnastics club in her hometown of Burnsville in 1975, because she came under the tutelage of longtime club coaches Fred and Annette Leider. The Leiders were the precursor to the current club coaches, providing a strong foundation in gymnastics, which carried over to the brand new high school competition. The first girls gymnastics state meet took place in March of that year at Armstrong High School in Plymouth.

Berning, now Bonnie Burak, became the first Minnesota high school gymnast to win multiple championships. As a senior, she swept the four event titles en route to the first all-around championship. She also led Burnsville to the first of three team titles in the first four years of the meet.

Burak and her teammates with the Burnsville Girls’ Athletic Association competed against teams from such states as Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and Michigan and were successful. So when the first MSHSL state meet was held, it was uncharted territory, but an air of positivity surrounded Burnsville.

With its slew of gymnasts trained by the Leiders, including perhaps the state’s best gymnast in Burak, the Braves, as they were known then, were confident when they entered the gym that first day.

“We had a great coach in Peggy McDonald,” recalled Burak. “She wasn’t a gymnastics coach. She was a teacher. But we loved her. There was no pressure. She knew how to get the best out of us. She was encouraging, she was kind, she was supportive. She just told us to have fun and do our best.”

Burak never expected to have the success she did.

“I was pretty confident on the [uneven] bars, the floor exercise and vault. On the beam, I was just confident enough,” she remembered. “But I stuck my beam dismount and I never usually did that. I gave extra thanks to the Lord for that blessing.”

Still, Burak was surprised to be the big winner of the meet. “I never intended to win every event,” she said. “I just wanted to win bars and vault for me and the rest of the girls on the team.”

Burak makes her home in Colorado Springs, where she and her husband, Steve, have supported Athletes in Action since 1984. He was a wrestler and coach, and they raised three sons to be champion wrestlers. At age 68, the Buraks are still involved with wrestling.

She remembers her high school success with a fondness still tinged with wonder 50 years later.

“In life, every once in a while things come along that you can’t plan for,” she said. “When I do look back, I have to look at the blessings I’ve been given along the way.”

Stephanie Garr doesn’t do much with gymnastics anymore, but the 1999 Eagan graduate hasn’t sacrificed all of the skills that earned her the Class 2A all-around championship that year.

“I can still do a handstand and walk on my hands,” she said. “I haven’t lost it all.”

Garr, who was Stephanie Benson then, won the Class 2A all-around championship in 1999 with a score of 39.325, which remains the highest individual mark in state meet history. Since then, gymnastics has revalued its scoring system, meaning that her score, which has been atop the MSHSL record book for a quarter of a century, could remain there for years to come.

Following high school, Garr competed in college at Iowa and coached high school gymnastics for a year at Farmington before moving to San Francisco. She met her husband, Julian, there and they married in 2016.

Since then, they have lived a semi-nomadic life. They tucked all of their belongings into a storage unit in California and have lived as intrepid wanderers, rarely settling in one location for more than a year.

Stephanie is a writer and editor. She and Julian have a YouTube channel called Big & Small Travel in which they document their nearly decade-long adventures. See their work at www.youtube.com/@BigSmallTravel.

They call Bergamo, a town in northern Italy, home. For now.

At this time of year, Stephanie’s state-meet record score comes up often. Generally, it’s raised by her mother, who still lives here and, like most proud parents, is always thrilled to remind her daughter of her place in the record books.

“My mom still brings it up,” Garr said with a laugh.

Garr remembered when she began high school gymnastics. She was in her sophomore year, having just stepped away from a successful stint as a club gymnast.

She admits that, at first, she underestimated the high schoolers.

“I went in there a bit cocky,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m a club gymnast. I’m a Level 10.' I thought high school was kind of lame but still kind of fun.”

It wasn’t long before her eyes were opened, her opinion altered. “I was like, ‘Wait, there are some girls that are really good!’ And that helped push me.”

She took to high school gymnastics quickly. “I loved the team spirit,” she said. “By my senior year, it just felt so right and was really inspiring for me.”

Garr said, to this day, she values the lessons learned in high school gymnastics. Things like perseverance, coming through under pressure and following her heart.

“When you fall, you get back up,” she said. “I learned how to deal with pressure, how to deal with different personalities, and pursuing what I want.”

Chaney Neu remembers the onslaught of attention. She also remembers wondering what all the fuss was about.

Neu was a sophomore at Champlin Park when she produced the only swatch of perfection to grace the MSHSL gymnastics stage. She was awarded a perfect 10 on her first vault of the 2019 Class 2A individual tournament.

It was the first perfect score given in a state meet. It was so unheard of that Neu, who had been scoring 9.7 and 9.8 in the vault all season, began to retreat to the starting line to prepare for her next vault. A teammate had to bring her to her senses.

“I just kind of blacked out,” Neu said. “I was getting ready to run back for my second vault and she said, ‘You just got a 10. You don’t need to do your second one.’ I was like, ‘Oh, yeah.’ ”

That moment defines what made Neu a three-time all-around state champion by the time she was a sophomore. Her focus was always on what comes next.

“I was such a perfectionist, I never really took it all in,” she said.

Even after the meet, when she had clinched the all-around championship and media members thronged, shooting pictures of her posing with the official 10.000 score, she just wanted to move on.

Things went wonky for Neu soon after. She landed a routine awkwardly at a club meet on Mother’s Day, less than three months later, tearing two ligaments and the meniscus in her right knee.

She never competed again.

Neu always kept a toe in the gymnastics world, now as a manager for the Gophers gymnastics team.

A senior at the University of Minnesota, Neu is planning on a career as a chiropractor. She loves being around the sport but doesn’t talk much about her past. Few on the team know what she accomplished on that special night in 2019.

It still comes up occasionally — a roommate has introduced her as “the girl who scored a 10 in a state meet” – but she’s moved on, with just one regret.

“I wish I would have lived more in the moment,” she said. “My only regret is not appreciating the sport and the skill I had a little more. But the state meet was always my favorite meet. I met so many amazing gymnasts there.”

At Roy Wilkins Auditorium, St. Paul RiverCentre.

Team / Friday

Class 1A: 11 a.m. Defending champion: Becker

Teams: Byron, Mankato East, Worthington, Breck, Watertown-Mayer/Mound-Westonka, Benson/KMS, Monticello, Detroit Lakes

Class 2A: 6 p.m. Defending champion: Lakeville South

Teams: Owatonna, New Prague, East Ridge, Cretin-Derham Hall, St. Michael-Albertville, Hopkins, Forest Lake, St. Cloud

Individuals / Saturday

Class 1A: 11 a.m. 2024 champions: Lauren Woelfel, Becker (balance beam), Hali Bullerman, Worthington (floor exercise), Avery McAllister, Perham (vault), Dakota Esget, North Branch (uneven bars, all-around)

Class 2A: 6 p.m. 2024 champions: Jackie Bergeron, St. Michael-Albertville (floor exercise, vault, balance beam, all-around); Delaney Cunnington, Cretin-Derham Hall (uneven bars)