3rd Place (Team), 6th Place Individual (Paige Johnson)
TEAM: Darcy, Paige, Romilly, Olivia and Isibeal
By Lisa Nixson
This is the biggest event of the gymnastics season with schools from all over Britain and the Netherlands and Brussels competing over three days.
We all travelled down Sat afternoon ready for an early start Sunday morning, so with hair expertly coiffured into place by Claudia and Mrs Fletcher and plenty of diamante gems and anything else that sparkled adorning the girls (bling was the order of the day, we would be noticed one way or another…not entirely my cup of tea as you can guess but I went with it!!)
We started with the group sequence a couple of the girls extremely nervous to begin with and I definitely at this stage wished I hadn’t had breakfast…but the music blared out and they were off giving a fine performance with no major mishaps and lots to be very proud of. 1 down four to go.
So with a break and time to get focused again, we warmed up in a relaxed manner and as we approached our first apparatus I was feeling confident. Voluntary Vault.. the girls run towards the vault jump on the springboard turn themselves upside down hands touch the vault propel themselves off to land on their feet with out losing body tension in a straight shape…not easy. But I can only describe each and every one of them as AWESOME the best vaults we have ever performed in competition.. with Darcy and Paige scoring 9.4 out of 9.5 a perfect start..
Onto set floor every girl does the same set of moves in the same order. One step out of place one tiny wobble can make a huge difference. Isibeal set them off with a brilliant routine and the others know the bar is set high. All safely through and a great job done.
Voluntary floors our best piece to date and no-one disappointed beautifully executed and and again Adcote are rocking it.
So one apparatus left Set Vault similar to the Voluntary vault except that instead of landing on your feet you land flat on your back holing a dish shape on a big pile of mats.. well kind of!!
so with a sneaky few smurf haribos inside us just for that bit of a sugar rush.. we are off and without exception all the girls vaulted with what I would say was a personnel best to date.. Fan.. bloody .. tastic ( sorry).
The long wait for the presentation 6.30 pm eventually comes around, whatever the outcome Adcote looked behaved and did the school name proud.
The results… 3rd place team and 6th place individual for Paige Johnson absolutely blown away..
Did I mention that I love my job?!