Date: Saturday 17th September 2016 - Sunday 18th September 2016 at Temple Park, South Shields
Entries close: -0001-11-30
Entry ages: 9 years +
Cangaroos travelled up the North East for the third Trampoline League event of the season on 17th September. A reduced entry for the team meant an almost leisurely start as our gymnasts weren't competing till Saturday afternoon.
First to compete was Trinity Kelly in the 15-16 League 3 Women's event, who after a successful Cardiff competition was looking too secure her ranking points for the League Finals in November. Two excellent routines for her preliminaries and a score of 79.940 secured 2nd place and 75 points to ensure her qualification to the National Finals and to that days competition Final. A high quality routine ensured the silver medal.
Sydney Kelly was up next in the 13-14 League 3 Women's event. Sydney was also looking to secure her National Finals rankings and after taking 5th in Cardiff was hoping for the same or better. Sydney produced her two best ever League routines to be in 1st place after the preliminary rounds, giver her 100 points and confirming her National Finals qualification. She followed this up with another great routine to take 1st place and her first ever gold medal at a National event. Massive congratulations Sydney.
Our last competitor of the day was Luis Pires. Luis hadn't competed for 18 months and has been on the floor as a coach or Judge for Cangaroos for most of this time. However, class showed through and despite limited training, 2 high quality routines saw Luis take 2nd place after the preliminary rounds and score 75 ranking points towards qualification to the League Finals. This could be enough, but maybe competing at Wigan will secure the spot. Unfortunately, in the final, some of the competitors raised their game and Luis, despite scoring higher in the final round, slipped back to a very credible 4th place finish.
So after day 1, Cangaroos came with 1 x Gold, 1 x Silver and 1 x 4th, a very good day indeed.
Day 2 began with our League 1 Men, with Matthew Burson and Zach Goggin competing in the 15-16 age group. An error from an under the weather Zach ended his competition for the day as he only completed 4 skills in his routine. However, Matthew performed two top quality routines and secured 1st place after the preliminary rounds and 100 ranking points. Along with the 75 points scored in Cardiff, that secures his qualification for the League Finals. Tough competition from his fellow finalists meant that he had to pull out a good routine to take Gold. Achieving his highest score at this level, he secured 1st place and the Gold medal.
In the last individual competition of the day, Matthew competed in the 15+ Men's Superleague event. This is open to all ages over 15 years and competitors perform the World Championship routines. An unusual error at the very end of Mathew's 1st routine saw him marked out of 9 skills instead of the full 10. This meant he went into the final in 8th place and unfortunately no ranking points are earned if a gymnast fails to complete both routines. However, he improved his placing to a very credible 5th place, beating his Cardiff final placing by 1 position.
Cangaroos completed the competition with 2 x Gold medals, 1 x silver, 1 x 4th and 1 x 5th places. A great competition for the club.
Finally, our congratulations to James Able from Comets, who has been training with Cangaroos for the last few months who recorded his 1st medal of the League events, taking 3rd place and bronze in the League 2 Men's 13-14 event. Well done James. Cangaroos will be travelling to Wigan for the final League qualifier of the season in October ahead of the League Finals in November, which this year will be held at the Olympic Velodrome on Queen Elizabeth Park, London. Prior to that, a large contingent of Cangaroos will be competing at the 1st Regional NDP event in Cambridge in 25th September and the University Sports Centre and we wish all our gymnasts well for that event.
Our thanks as ever go out to our officials and coaches who supported the gymnast's entries and stayed all day to perform their official duties.