Date: Sunday 22nd March 2015 at Cambridge University Sports Centre
Entries close: TBC
Entry ages: 4 years +
42 Trampoline gymnasts from Cambridge Cangaroos took part in the Regional NDP (National Development Programme) and Grading trampoline competition held at the Cambridge University Sports Hall on Sunday 22nd March. The club would especially like to thank our coaches, Francoise Lucas, Luis Pires, Scott Kinnley and Tony Fagelman who covered every panel to make sure all our gymnasts were fully supported in their competitive efforts. Thanks must also be extended to our Judging officials, Olga and Natasha Feldman and Simon Burson, our marshal, Kim Pearson, our Technical lead, Neil Pike and to Andrew Aistrup and the Cambridge University students for running a great event.
Gymnasts taking part in the NDP events were competing to achieve medals, qualification to the Regional Championships Finals or qualification from the top Regional level into the first of the National level (from NDP 6 to NDP 7). To achieve qualification to the Regional Championship finals, gymnasts must be placed in the top 2 and achieve a minimum aggregate Execution score of 45 in both rounds of the event and then be ranked in the top 2 at each level from this event and the previous NDP event in Hitchen. To achieve qualification to NDP 7, gymnasts had to achieve a minimum Execution score of 22.5 in the 1st round (23.00 if over 15 years of age) and 22.5 in the 2nd round, plus achieve the minimum difficulty tariff for their age. This was the largest competition held by the Region in years with over 440 gymnasts taking part in the event. Cangaroos had the largest entry and clubs from Cambridgeshire made up over a quarter of all the entries, so a massive well done to all Cambridgeshire clubs, Cangaroos, Comets, Aspire, Rotations and Fenland Flyers.
Cangaroos Gymnasts came away with 21 individual medals, including 6 Gold, 11 Silver and 4 Bronze medals and 3 Team gold medals. An amazing haul of silverware, with 1 achieving qualification to the National competition circuit and 6 achieving the qualifying criteria for the Regional Championship Finals. In order to provide larger competitive groups, the competition organisers merged a number of the age groups. This meant that our gymnasts were competing against a wider age range and would have potentially won more medals in their own age groups. However, for qualification to the Regional Championship Finals, all the gymnasts are entered under their own age groups.
The day began with our TPD gymnasts, these are our gymnasts with special needs. The club had three entries in the R1C1 category and we had three excellent results. All three gymnasts came away with medals. Jane Wilkey took Gold for the 2nd time in two competitions this season, Alex Radford competing in his first Regional competition since his severe accident two years ago took Silver and Olivia Newey took Bronze in her first ever Regional competition.
At the same time all the other panels saw Cangaroos gymnasts competing: Mila Feldman, Ashlea Bucke and Sydney Kelly were all competing in the NDP 6 ladies category. Mila and Ashlea were competing in the u17 ladies and Sydney was competing in the u15 ladies. Mila did exceptionally well to finish in 2nd place as she has been suffering from a back injury for the last week and was unable to train properly or compete her higher difficulty routine. Ashlea successfully completed her new voluntary routine and was extremely pleased to take 4th place. Sydney saw an improvement on her previous experience at this level at Hitchen and managed 6th place in a very high quality competition.
In the Club NDP 2 Mens u9 competition, Sollie Strydom-Green produced two very good routines and took 1st place. In the NDP 1 Mens u13 competition, Alex Burson competed extremely well in both rounds and took 2nd place In the Club NDP 2 Womens u11 competition Olivia Richardson took 4th place and Freya Martin took 6th place. Well done to both girls in their first Regional event.
Club NDP 2 Womens u13 competition Anna Richardson took 2nd place to improve on her sisters previous exploits and in the Club NDP 2 Womens u9 competition Ella Crewe took 2nd place.
Next to compete were the Mens NDP 6 groups. Cangaroos had gymnasts in two age groups 17+ and under 15. In the 17+ category, Laurence Halfpenny produced two high scoring routines to secure the silver medal, losing out narrowly due to a reduced difficulty tariff. He did however, successfully achieve the qualification requirements to the Regional Championship Finals. In the u15 age group, Zack Goggin scored a season best result, winning the event by a large margin, taking the gold medal, and more importantly, securing qualification to NDP 7 and the National Competition series. Gabriel Strydom-Green also produced his best routines this season and took the silver medal and achieved the qualifying score for the Regional Championship Finals. Our last competitor in this group was Abh McDonald-Marlow, Abhi had been unable to train for the previous two weeks due to a training accident, but we were all happy with his scores as he took a very close 4th place. Competing at the same time were our Womens 17+ and Womens u15 NDP 5 gymnasts, Katie Evans produced 2 good routines to take 3rd place and Felicity Lawrence managed 5th place in a close competition.
Our biggest entry was in the Womens u13 NDP 1 level where we had 6 entries and two teams. Amelia Crew, Hannah Swinton and Leacsidh Macdonald Marlow made up team A and Martha Graves, Sarah Hardwick and Scarlett East made up Team B. Scarlett produced our best result taking 2nd place and achieving the qualifying score for the Regional Championship Finals, Lexi was 5th, Sarah 6th, Hannah came 7th who after suffering an error in the first round came back to produce the highest scoring routine of the 2nd round (great resilience there), Martha was 9th who also did a great 2nd routine after an error in the 1st routine and Amelia was 10th. This was a fabulous effort by all our girls and we took the team gold as well with Team B taking those medals.
In the Womens NDP 2 17+, Jane Wilkey won her 2nd gold medal of the day, taking 1st place in that event. In the Womens NDP 4 u15 Aaliyah Kinnley produced 2 good routines to take 4th place, if she had managed to compete her 1st routine as well as her 2nd, she may have taken gold, but such is the life of a competitive trampolinist. Alexa Hanson was 5th who reversed the trend and was unable to keep up the quality from her 1st routine. Wrongly competing in In the Womens NDP 4 u17, Yasmin Snook still managed to take the silver medal, so that’s an excellent result against girls much older than herself. We’ll sort that out for the next competition.
Next up were Danae Candotti and Gemma White in the Womens NDP 2 u13. Both girls competed well in a close competition and Danae came 6th and Gemma 7th. In the Womens NDP 1 u11, Macy Dexter was looking to repeat her success of the previous competition where she took the gold. Although she scored extremely well, achieving the qualifying scores in both rounds, this was an extremely tight competition and she ended up in 4th place. Over in the Mens NDP 3 u15, Toby Chapman had two high scoring routines that earned him 3rd place on the day. He successfully achieved the qualifying score for the Regional Championship Finals, so we wait to hear if he has qualified to that.
Next up were the Womens NDP 1, 17+ with Joanna Costin and the u15’s with Caitlin Cook and Holly White. Joanna was taking part in only her 2nd ever competition and did extremely well to place 2nd. Holly produced 2 good routines and took 2nd place, narrowly missing out on qualification to the Regional Championship Finals, Caitlin came 6th.
In the Mens NDP 2 u13 Kieran Thorne bounced extremely well to take 2nd place and achieve the qualifying scores for the Regional Championship Finals.
Our final team of the day took part in the Womens NDP 3 u13, these consisted of Anya Snook, Mia Blockley and Rhyannon Kinnley. Anya and Mia both had one excellent routine and one good routine to place Mia 5th and Anya 6th but the best scores of the day were achieved by Rhyannon who stormed to 1st place, securing the qualifying scores for the Regional Championship Finals and ensuring the girls also won Team Gold.
In the afternoon our men, Luis Pires and Ali Macrae took to the competition floor for the Men’s National C 17+ competition. This is the top event for our Regional competitors and our guys were up against some very good competition. Luis was out to kill of his competition hoodoo after falling at each of the last 4 competitions. But this time it all came good, with two extremely high quality routines, Luis managed to take third place, losing out to 2nd place by just 0.1. Ali has produced a very good 1st routine, but small errors in the 2nd saw him drop to 4th place behind Luis.
So we ended the day victorious, the club had once again succeeded against huge competition and just about all of our gymnasts performed amazingly well. Yes, there were spills, there always are in trampolining, that’s what makes it so exciting a sport, anything can happen on the day to upset a carefully planned routine, or a burst of confidence or insight raises the gymnasts to new heights of excellence.
We look forward to the corroboration of the results from British Gymnastics and see how many Cangaroos have successfully achieved qualification to the Eastern Regional Team for the Regional Championship Finals in Peterborough on the weekend of 30th and 31st May. Our National gymnasts are now gearing up for the National competition season which begins on April 11th in Coventry and we wish them all the best for this years events.