Date: Saturday 6th December 2008 at Sawston
Entries close: TBC
Entry ages: 4 years +
On Saturday, 6th December, Sawston Sports Centre played host to Cambridge Cangaroo Trampoline Club’s closed competition. This year, the club decided to hold a competition for just its own members as they had increased so dramatically in size.
With over 50 competitors on the day, the competition was hard fought and well won in all our categories.
In our under 8’s/Roos grade, Matthew Burson showed great form to win by more almost 3 marks from 2nd placed Sydney Kelly, who on count-back, beat Olivia Vince into 3rd place. What a fantastic competition and just demonstrates our strength in depth and our bright stars for the future.
Our under 11’s competition was also keenly fought with just 1 mark separating 2nd from 6th place. But our winner by a long way at just 7 years old was Trinity Kelly. In 2nd place was Grace Pike and in 3rd was Alix Evans.
We combined our under 13’s with our under 15’s which made it quite difficult for our younger performers. But we saw some excellent routines, with Naomi Waldock coming out in 1st place, Katy-Beth McKenna in 2nd and Harry Frostic in third place.
Our final individual competition of the day was the over 15’s, this was the mostly closely fought out competition, with the joint leader after the 1st round crashing out in round 2. With just 0.6 marks separating 1st place from 3rd, Imogen Pickup took the honours, beating Michael Keelin into 2nd place by 0.1 and Sophie Housden was 3rd.
It should be pointed out that there were no marks awarded for difficulty and many of the more established performers had to compete harder routines. This put the pressure on them to succeed and I was especially pleased with how well they performed under such pressure.
To round of, the club staged a fancy dress synchro competition. With marks awarded for style of each competitor as they bounced hopefully in synchronisation on 2 trampolines, plus a mark for how well they match each other’s bouncing, this was always difficult to do well. This was coupled with cheers, claps and whistles to decide the best costumes, some examples can be seen on the right hand side. The day had started badly with one of our senior coaches and synchro pair injuring herself while setting up the trampolines and was thus unable to compete. However, Tony Fagelman, head coach stepped into the breach to bounce with Emily Perks, unfortunately he was still dressed in his clown outfit from his previous performance with Jane Wilkey, so synchronisation was somewhat poor. Despite this, Emily and Laura (in absentia) were awarded the best costumes of the day as Tigers bounded up and down. The competition was fierce, so close in fact we couldn’t separate 1st place. This was shared by the pairing of Katy-Beth McKenna and Francis Pickup as Father Christmas (replete with Ho Ho Ho’s) and Trinity Kelly & Imogen Pickup as Christmas fairies. In 3rd place, were our second set of Christmas fairies, Sophie Housden and Jo Withington. A special mention should go to Sarah Allen and Francoise Lucas whose outfits were narrowly piped by the Tigers.
Finally, after the competition, the club held its inaugural awards ceremony. Hollywood it wasn’t, but still to those that were recognised, it means a lot.
Our club champion, which is awarded to the performer who scores the highest score of the day at the club competition went to Trinity Kelly, rounding of the day with three 1st placed trophies
Club Champion was won by Trinity Kelly
Most improved performer (Netherhall) was presented to Yasmin Halliwell
Most improved performer (Chesterton/Cottenham) was presented to Naomi Waldock
Most improved Roo was presented to Charlotte Allen
Most improved performer (Sawston) was presented to Charles Heales.
The award for the greatest contribution made to the club in 2008 was presented to Neil Pike.
The committee would like to thank everyone who took part in the day, the competitors who made it such a great competition, the judges and officials who gave their time freely and thoroughly enjoyed it, the parents manning the refreshment stall and the tombola and the spectators who saw a fantastic few hours of competitive and fun trampolining. Our best wishes go out to Laura, and we hope to see you soon after a speedy recovery.
We now look forward to the grading competition at Letchworth in January 2009.