The Whistler Gymnastics Club had a comeback with stellar results from the Ogopogo Invitational in Kelowna, which took place on June 1.
Out of a field of over 400 attending gymnasts, the club managed to get almost their entire roster with top 10 finishes, with most of the kids managing a podium place in individual events.
“This is absolutely our season highlight as a club,” said Karin Jarratt, the competitive head coach for Whistler Gymnastics. “For how large this meet was, for so many of our girls to finish on the podium and everyone came away with a top 10 finish, no one left without acknowledgement.”
Standout results at the Ogopogo included 14-year-old Leah Brownlie, who managed second place all around after winning the bars and floor events in the Level 2 division. Hailey Jackson was at her first meet competing at Level 5 and earned a fourth place all around after achieving second and third on the vault and floor respectively.
Jackson has advanced two levels in the last five months, an achievement her coach describes as “unheard of.” In April this year, Jackson travelled to Saskatoon to compete at the Western Canadian Gymnastics Championships where she won the floor and vault disciplines to secure a second place overall in the Provincial Level 4 division.
“She’s an inspiration to the team for sure,” said Jarratt. “As all-around gymnasts they need to be to be good on everything. It’s usually the all around score that’s the biggest indicator of what kind of athlete you are. Each event requires a different kind of focus and a different thing to get nervous about.”
Overall it was a challenging season for Whistler Gymnastics, one of the reasons being the 2014 Pacific Rim Gymnastics Championships held in Richmond in April.
“Our usual season was disrupted, so we competed some athletes very early in the season, which was unusual for us,” said Jarratt. “They weren’t quite ready, didn’t quite get the results that we were hoping for, but based on the Ogopogo Invitational they were obviously doing everything right. ”
Women’s Artistic Gymnastics (WAG) in B.C. requires participation in the four disciplines of vault, floor, uneven bars and beam. Males have a slightly different routine with six disciplines of vault, floor, pommel horse, rings, parallel bars and the horizontal (high) bar. Each routine is evaluated on the difficulty and execution to give a score, which when added to the other routines will give an All Around (AA) score to rank the competitors.
While there are significantly fewer males participating in artistic gymnastics (Whistler still doesn’t have a male artistic program), there has been more presence in the trampoline program. Thirteen year-old Joe Davies recently qualified for nationals in Ottawa for the double mini tramp discipline, but was unfortunately injured before the event.
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