®
.jpg){kind=small}
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jumping into the New Year
 |
| Members posing with their array of trophies. (Downloadable copy below) |
The following weekend saw things get a bit more serious as 13 members were representing their schools and the Eastern Region at the Zonal Schools' finals in Shrewsbury. With winners in three of the four elite female classes (Faith Everett, Lucy Phillips & Chrissie Law) as well as two runners-up (Susanna Badley & Maddison Merritt) and a team win (Lucy & Susanna with Emma Brereton & Ellie Guy) the club will also be well-represented in the National Finals in Bath next month. Of those who fell at this hurdle all took away experience of travelling and overnighting for a competition for the first time as well as many personal best scores.
The middle of the month brought the first Regional Grading competition of the year to Brentwood's training venue at Brentwood School. The club has gathered a great reputation for well-run competitions and this one proved no exception. Being the largest regional competition in years with over 360 entries the day ran smoothly and saw many more success stories for the club. With the largest entry of 45, nearly half of the club's competitors were either first-timers or newly promoted and competing at a higher level for the first time. Despite this the club took the competition by storm with no less than 16 qualifying to higher grade competition (three of them to National level - Faith Everett, Joe Harris & Vanessa Lewis), 26 achieving individual and/or team podium places, and 24 beating their personal best scores. The closest near-miss of the day was Georgia Tyrrell, newly promoted to grade D she scored 50.9 missing the enhanced qualification score to National C by just 0.1.
Bringing January to a close was the first National gala of the season in Hatfield. Spread over two days the club had two first-time FIG B performers on the Saturday and 4 National C competitors (two first-timers and another returning after a long absence from this level) on the Sunday. Being just short of international level FIG B is a demanding grade in which to compete and for Chrissie Law the pressure saw minor errors creep into her performance, Susanna Badley coped much better in her age group rising from 5th after the set round to 3rd place overall through a demonstration of pure form against higher difficulty. The Sunday saw three in under-15 girls C and Joshua Newman in the boys under-15. With 53 in the girls competition they were split into four 'flights' with Lucy Phillips in the first, Kensie Sherlock in the second and Lauren Michaels late on in the final one. Lucy performed well in her first national outing but narrowly missed the 'top 8' final although qualifying to national finals later in the year, Kensie was sublime with her performances drawing admiring glances as she got a promotion offer to FIG B never dropping from 1st place through all 3 rounds despite an injured foot (subsequently found to be a broken bone!) Lauren, unfortunately, submitted to nerves in her first round and didn't complete her routine but she used the second round to show what she could do and scored well. Joshua Newman was in the final group of the day and his performances were a repeat of Kensie's (although without the injury) drawing attention from some of the country's top coaches as he won by a country mile with qualification to FIG B - he also drew the quote of the month as the chair of judges was heard to remark to the judging panel after his set round routine -
"and that, quite simply, is how it is done".
To find out more about any of these competitions or the club and its regular recreational pay as you go sessions please visit the club's website at brentwoodtc.org.
-- ENDS --
Click on picture for full size image.
Brentwood Gazette article - published 8th February 2012 - p62
(Sadly heavily truncated report on Hatfield Gala)
Click
on thumbnail for larger image.