Club News May to July 2009

North West Junior Tumbling & Sports Acrobatics Championships

12th July 2009 – Park Road Liverpool

Gymnasts from our club recently entered the North West Junior Tumbling Championships in Liverpool. We showed the region what super tumblers we had and proved it by taking 20 medals including FIVE North West Championship titles – WOW! Rachel Heron, aged 6, Anna Champion, aged 8, Lauren Gallagher and Jessica Pang, both aged 9, and Holly McEvoy, aged 12 all tumbled brilliantly showing off to the audience and judges their skills. Their coaches said it was a brilliant achievement and that the gymnasts had worked very hard and they were proud of them. For many of the gymnasts this was their very first competition at this level. WELL DONE to all gymnasts.
In the sports acro competition our medal winners were Amee Foster and Georgia Hulme, who recieved a bronze medal in the Prep B Womens Pairs 20 value.

NDP FINALS, FENTON MANOR, STOKE

Saturday and Sunday, 9th & 10th May 2009

Saturday saw Imogen, Claudia and Sian competiting in the NDP Elite Grades at Fenton Manor, Stoke. This is always a lovely venue with great facilities and the competition is always very professional as it is run by British Gymnastics themselves.

Unfortunately Imogen drew the short straw having to arrive at 7:30am and after a few teething problems with tickets the warm up started. Imogen in the Elite Grade 1 (9-10yrs) looked good in warm up. Very serious, focusing on the task at hand she did her two set runs well with a slight hickup with one run landing on the track. She looked strong and was placed in the finals. She then performed a clean 3rd run round off flic, straight back for the finals coming 6th.

Next up in Elite Grade 2 (10-12 yrs) were Sian and Claudia. Sian was up first and performed her first run well doing round off whip, whip, flic, flic, tuck back. However, Sian surprised everyone in her second run, deciding not to stick to the set grade run but make up her own of round off, 7 flics. We all thought she was going to flic straight out of the arena back to the hotel for a swim. She fortunately made it through to the final but unfortunately her error caused her to lose a lot of points and her final placing was 7th.

Claudia in the same group was determined not to make any mistakes, with 2 clean, strong runs she qualified 3rd for the finals. We were all very excited for her and extra nervous as we knew she was in with a chance for our first medal of the day. She performed her 3rd run of round off flic, full twist well and kept her 3rd place rating to take the bronze medal. We were all very proud of her and went crazy. I'm sure from the huge grin on her face she was pleased with her placing and can now add a magnificent medal to her haul. Well done Claudia!

Sunday had a lovely start of 7:30am again and two very nervous gymnasts competiting in their biggest tumbling competition yet. Laura and Amee took first place in their relevant age groups in the North West competition and qualified for the competition. Both looked a bit bewildered having only ever watched the competition from the spectator stand and now they were in it.

Like true professionals though they warmed up and Laura started her runs for the NDP Grade 1 (9-10yrs) competition. With only the slightest mistakes in her warm ups we were expecting things to go well. The standard of this group was high with some of the girls looking much older than Laura. The first run went well and we all breathed a sigh of relief. She was up for the second run and we had our fingers crossed. Handspring rebound jump round off flic flic half turn. Any slight hesitation or stop would mean 0 points for the run and no qualification for the final. She started, we held our breathe, she did it!!!!!!!! We all cheered so loudly I'm sure they heard us outside of the arena. Another clean run in the finals but against stiff competition Laura came 7th. Well done Laura we were all very proud of you.

Amee was in the NDP 1 (11-12yrs) age group. Looking very tall and slim, she was one to look out for in her group. Hampered by a sore ankle from training we wondered how she would get on. With good warm up runs we knew she'd place in the finals if she could perform her runs well. Fortunately she had good runs losing small deductions for some powerful landings. We were kept in suspense not seeing her scores but hoping she was placed in the top for the finals. The gymnast who qualifies 8th in the qualifiers, goes first in the final and so forth. We started counting down as each girl in her group did their final run. 8,7,6,5,4, and Amee was on - she was placed 3rd whooo hooo, now if she could just keep her cool she was in for a medal. Round off, flic, flic, stretch jump! With a few steps on landing she was awarded a 4th place just missing out on a medal.

A big thank you to Karen who had her hands full on the weekend trying to coach for two clubs, but kept up the girls spirit and motivation as always. Again we were all very proud of the girls.