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Gazette Series - Club of the Week
The club were pleased to be one of the first clubs to feature as the Brentwood Gazette's Club of the Week. The following article was featured on 23rd April 2008.
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| TOP CLUB: Brentwood Trampoline Club members and coaches | |
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| HIGH FLYER: Georgia Tyrrell | NATIONAL CHAMPION: Scott Gregory |
Victorious Bouncers
Brentwood Trampoline Club continues to go from strength to strength.
Matt Harris
sport@gazettenews.co.uk
The recent success of Brentwood Trampoline Club is rather fitting considering the town was once the UK's hub for the sport.
For Ted Blake, known as the person who introduced Britain to trampolining, linked up with a PE teacher from Brentwood and set up a factory in the town to make Nissen trampolines and develop the sport.
For a short time Brentwood became the centre of the country's trampolining scene and so it seems right that more than 50 years on the town's trampoline club is going from strength to strength.
At a recent national competition the club saw 90 per cent of it's competitors achieve medals, while members have also gone onto to achieve international success.
Two years ago Hannah Davies became synchro champion (synchronised trampolining) at the World Age Games, the junior version of the World Championships, while Matthew Wright took silver in the games in 2007. And currently 15-year-old Scott Gregory is the national synchro champion.
Senior coach, Dave Kingaby told the Gazette: "It's been fantastic. Our high performance coach Paul Kitchen has led the way with a real strong focus on form and technique before difficulty.
"If the form is there and the technique is correct, the difficulty is easier to achieve, and this is fundamental to our success. A lot of the clubs we compete against put difficulty first but this way makes us stand out from the crowd.
"The results we've been receiving recently, with a 90 per cent medal rate, that doesn't come through luck, that's down to hard work and diligence."
Kitchen is the highest ranked of the club's coaches, only one level away from training international competitors.
Dave and Graham Parker are the club's two senior coaches and there are two further club coaches in Nikola Kelly and Sarah Bembrick-Taylor, and seven junior coaches.
The club has also just invested in 13 newly qualified assistant coaches which help run the recreational side of the club.
Members of the public can turn up pay-as-you-bounce for a hour and a half to either give trampolining a try or just do it for exercise.
It is the traditional way into the club and from here potential members can decided whether they want to carry on leisurely attending or start building up towards competing.
Dave explains: "Trampolining is fun and it can be hard work but when you are there bouncing on a trampoline it's exhilarating and it generates endorphins. It's a really good aerobic workout.
"But it's completely different from bouncing around on a small trampoline in your back garden, it's much more exciting to do it properly. At the moment we haven't got a waiting list as such because we've expanded our facilities.''
© Brentwood Gazette 2008