Date: Saturday 13th April 2019 - Sunday 14th April 2019 at Eastleigh
Entries close: 2019-03-04
Entry ages: 9 years +
It was an early start for Cangaroos at Eastleigh. The drive down to the south coast takes nearly 2 1/2 hours and the day started bright and early with our first bouncer on at 8am.
The English championships is a national competition structure open to all gymnasts bourn in England not affiliated to another home nation. The routines can be defined by the gymnasts and only have to meet certain criteria. This means that there can be quite a lot of tactics in how to setup your routines.
First up bright and early on Saturday morning was Rhiannon in the Silver 11-12 girls category. A massive group of nearly 80 gymnasts many with a great deal of national competition experience. Under the watchful eyes of Laura and Tony she warmed up carefully and consistantly. When it was time to compete she did well against a tough group completing both routines and finishing an admirable 67th. The onlooking support of Mum; Marianne, James, Ali and Caitlyn gave great cheers of appreciation as we then began the wait for our next gymnasts.
After a couple of hours it was Molly warming up to compete in the same group. She was a little more consistent with her routines and able to pull together higher scores and finish 51st - another positive result.
Very soon after it was Ali who was nursing a back injury that kept him out of the NDP Regional Team finals. As a result his routine was a much lower difficulty and height version as he tried to secure a qualification spot. Both routines fortunately went through without a hitch with him scoring mid 7s and finishing in 6th place which should be enough to carry him through to the English Championships finals later this year.
With our gymansts done we made our way back to our hotels and braced ourselves for the turn of Zach and James in gold on Sunday. Could Matt Burson's long standing difficulty record finally be knocked off the top spot?
To be continued...