Date: Saturday 6th December 2014 - Sunday 7th December 2014 at Cambridge University Sports Centre
Entries close: TBC
Entry ages: 4 years +
Cangaroos trampoline gymnasts, Matthew Burson and Zach Goggin enjoyed the luxury of a lie-in as they prepared for the National league Finals. Luckily for all Cangaroos members, the finals were being held in the new Cambridge University Sports Hall, this also meant that our gymnasts had a good cheering section from the spectators.
Saturday 6th December was the preliminary rounds and with qualification to the finals the next day, two quality routines were required from our gymnasts. The first competition of the day saw Zach Goggin competing in the League 3 13-14 Boys competition. After Round 1, despite some indifferent judging, Zach was in 4th place. Round 2 was closely fought and Zach pulled out a competent routine to qualify for Sunday’s final in 5th place, a great result.
The afternoon session saw the League 2 competitors compete and Matthew Burson took to the trampolines in the League 2 13-14 boys competition. Ranked in 1st place coming into the competition, Matthew had a lot to live up to. A stunning 1st routine saw him in 1st place with a lead of over 3 points and the highest time of flight score of the day so far (across all competition). Trying his new voluntary routine in competition was always going to be a gamble, but it paid off, and although not as high a quality of performance as we would have liked, he still completed it well and extended his lead to over 5 points after the qualifying rounds.
Finals day, 7th December and all finals were being run on zero points, this meant no scores were carried through form the previous day’s competition and just one routine would decide the final standings.
League 3 gymnasts were first to compete and Zach was up again. He lived up to his promise, pulling out his best voluntary routine of the weekend and lifted himself two places to secure an excellent 3rd place and bronze medal. Shortly after, the League 3 finals began and Matt watched all his competitors pull out quality routines to put pressure on his final routine. Matt also responded well, putting in his best performance of the weekend for his voluntary routine to secure 1st place with a lead of 1.7 points ahead of his nearest rival and Matt became National League British Champion.
With two finalists Cangaroos gymnasts performed excellently and we left the competition stage with two medals a Gold and Bronze. A fantastic performance.
Head coach Tony Fagelman had this to say about the boys. ‘A fantastic performance from both boys, with an excellent outcome for both. Zach did extremely well to exceed his ranking and win the bronze medal and Matt did brilliantly to complete his highest ever difficulty in competition. Just so proud of the boys and their achievements’
Our thanks must go to the coaches who helped the boys achieve this success and also to the officials who supported the boys through the rounds. A special thanks goes out to the organizers of the National League for putting on a great series of competitions.
We look forward now to our club competition, where both Matt and Zach will be competing against their own club members and a great many of Canagroos members will be taking part in the individual, synchro and two trick competition. As well as the coaches being dragged to the trampolines to also compete their best for the Coaches Ego cup.
Following the Christmas break, training begins in earnest for the Regional competitions for our members, with the National Spring events starting in March for our top gymnasts. The club looks forward to a hugely successful 2015 for all our gymnasts.