COMPETITION REVIEWS 2010

Well done to all the gymnasts who have competed this year you have all worked hard and are an asset to the Club – a big thanks also needs to go to the parents, family and friends for all of the running about to training and competitions!!

On Sunday 21 November we competed at the second County Boys Competition in the Forest of Dean. This year the competition had two new sections, a junior and a senior group as well as the Novice competition. We took a small squad of 5 boys who all competed competently. Our newest member of the boys squad, Alex Lyons (6th overall) competed in the Novice 1 section with Ben Lawrence (4th overall), both boys completed strong vaults and floor routines and Ben placed 2nd on Vault.

Jake Winter competed in his first competition and secured third place on Floor vault and Trampet – Bronze medal overall

Liam Caudle competed in the junior competition, there was tough competition compared to last year and the scoring was very close, Liam placed 3rd on floor and 5th over all.

Forrest Fry competed in the senior competition, again there was tough competition but it was very exciting seeing double twists and FIG routines being performed. Forrest held his own and placed 2nd on Vault and by performing a double front somi on trampette placed 2nd on Trampette, securing him a Bronze medal overall.

Finally on the 17th October we took a squad of 4 gymnasts to the Gloucestershire County Four Piece Championships. Something we haven’t done for several years.

With months of training on all four pieces – Beam, Floor, Vault and Bars (and quite a few blisters on hands!) the girls turned up at the Forest of Dean understandably apprehensive and nervous about what was ahead of them.

Phoebe Restorick as always performed beautiful choreography during her floor routine. A little slip on her front somersault was the only mistake but unfortunately was penalised heavily. She was nursing a bad blister on her hand but managed to complete her bar routine and performed a good vault. The highlight was her beam routine where she ‘stuck’ her backward walkover and gained 2nd place. Overall she came 5th.

Jessica Laight produced a lovely floor routine and a good vault. She performed upstart on bars which was a great achievement and takes months to perfect. Although she missed a move in her beam routine she still managed to gain 4th place overall. Fantastic as she was the youngest in her group.

Jess Marriott was consistently good on all four pieces. Jess executes a handspring vault with ease (just look at the photo’s!!) which credited her 1st place, the highest vaulting score of the day! She performed her bar and beam routines with great confidence which included a backward walkover on beam which she did with no wobble placing 3rd. A neat and precise bar routine placed her 3rd again. Overall a BRONZE medal which after a mixed competition season was very well deserved. Well done Jess!!!

Katie Mace confidently took to the floor and produced a lovely routine and competed an excellent handspring vault. She placed 1st on both these pieces. You wouldn’t have known she had any nerves as she took to the beam and competed for the first time a back flip. Although a little disappointed that she fell she was credited with the move and continued with confidence and dismounted with a lovely cartwheel tuck back all resulting in a 2nd placing. A neat bar routine where she placed 2nd all contributed to an overall GOLD medal! Level 5 age 11 County Champion!!! Excellent work Katie!!!

The competition was an enjoyable experience for both gymnasts and coaches albeit slightly less so for Claire who fell down a hole in the matting and broke a bone in her foot which resulted to a trip to casualty!!

Well done gymnasts we look forward to seeing you all build on this experience and improve on all four pieces in the coming year.

The following week we took a squad to the Wilshire Novice Competition which was held at Wiltshire School of Gymnastics in Melksham.

Sadly Georgia Stevens injured her ankle during warm up and after a trip to hospital learnt she had fractured it. Sam Illing was also unable to compete due her elbow injury. We wish both girls a speedy recovery.

The other girls competed in the ‘out of counties’ section. Although we were disappointed that no other clubs had entered it was still a great experience for our gymnasts.

All of our gymnasts performed floor routines to music and handspring vaults. For many this was only the second or third time doing this. It was nice to see their growing confidence which reflected in their scores. Comparing our scores to those ‘In County’ we think we would of run away with most of the medals!

One of the Vaulting judges commented on how nice it was to judge our girls on vault and how neat we were on floor. Not something judges do very often!!! Congratulations girls on representing the club and doing us proud!!! Results are shown below:

OUT OF COUNTY LEVEL B 9 to 11 YRS

OUT OF COUNTY LEVEL A UNDER 12S

OUT OF COUNTY LEVEL C OVER 12S

OUT OF COUNTY LEVEL D OVER 12S

In October we found ourselves with 3 competitions back to back. The first was the National Tumbling Championships held in Gloucester.

This is always a challenge for our gymnasts as we don’t own (or have space for!) a full size tumble run. With only 2 training sessions at GL1 we headed off to the competition with 3 teams.

Team 1 - Katie Mace, Liam Caudle

Team 2 - Jess Laight, Jess Marriott, Sam Illing

Team 3 - Forrest Fry, Phoebe Restorick

We use this competition for more of an experience rather than hoping for any placings. We were up against clubs who only do tumbling and have the luxury of always training on a proper run. Our gymnasts were understandably nervous and a little daunted by some of the other tumblers high standard but still performed well.

Katie Mace performed 3 excellent tumbles. A tough group of 19 gymnasts Katie gained 9th place with her 1st tumble, 8th place 2nd tumble and a very credible 3rd place with her 3rd tumble. Overall a fantastic achievement she gained 6th place with a score of 77.6.

Liam experienced some first time tumbling nerves but still managed to perform his tuck back with ease. An overall score of 72.7 is a good benchmark which he will only improve on next year.

Sam, Jess and Jess were in a group of 26 tumblers. Sam unfortunately was suffering with an elbow injury but still managed to score the highest out of the three girls for tumble run 1 with a mark of 25.7. Her overall score was 71.7.

The two Jess’s performed very well. Jess Marriott came out on top after performing some complex runs with a score of 74.2 with Jess Laight gaining 73.9.

Phoebe and Forrest found themselves in the toughest group as they just fell into the senior section and were up against tumblers much older than them and with much more experience. It was an exciting round as we watched gymnasts perform double back somersaults, double twisting back somersaults and full in back out somersaults to name but a few.

Not to be out done Forrest pulled out all the stops and competed whip backs and somersaults all over the place!! A great experience for both of them with overall scores of 67 for Phoebe and Forrest 73.1.

We look forward to improving our tumbling now we have a new 12 metre tumble track and maybe next year improve on our placings. Well done tumblers!!!!

Full scores can be viewed by downloading the overall results spreadsheet.

On Sunday 27 June we took a squad of over 20 gymnasts to the County Novice Competition in the Forest of Dean. For some of the girls it was their first time competing at this level so understandably there were some nerves but in true Cotswold style all the girls held their heads high and competed extremely well and we are now the proud hosts of 6 County Champions, Laura Tenty, Abbie Smith, Holly Arman, Romy Bull, Anete Fugalis and Phoebe Restorick. Results are in the table below.

Earlier on in the year we took a small group of our competition squad to the Gloucestershire Levels competition in Fromeside, we had 3 gymnasts competing at Level 5 where they got to perform a somersault and handspring vault for the first time and 2 gymnasts competing at Level 4 where they have to compete a tumble with two somersaults in it and the handspring vault. Given the training facilities we have compared to other clubs competing in the competition we did extremely well coming away with medals in each section we competed in. Results are in the table below.