A high bar is set for high school gymnastics athletes.
Quesnel’s contingent just came home from the 2023 edition of the BC School Sports provincial championships held this year at Windsor Secondary School in North Vancouver. Head coach Taylor O’Flynn said each and every local competitor came home with something to be proud about. They represented their school well, some coming from each of North Cariboo Christian School, Quesnel Junior School, and Correlieu Secondary School.
“The athletes did an amazing job at B.C. high school provincials, they are all very proud of themselves,” O’Flynn said. “Gymnasts are used to typically being up against roughly 12-20 other athletes whom are all in the same age category but high school is all athletes from Grades 8-12 in each level competing against each other, so each category had about 60 athletes.”
The best part, she said, was the balanced results. “Every single gymnast from Quesnel placed,” O’Flynn said. To place means to finish in the Top 8 on at least one apparatus. Since there are so many competitors per apparatus, in the high school edition of the sport, and you could be 13 up against an 18-year-old, it makes it especially difficult to make it into that echelon.
O’Flynn said there are other challenges to overcome, for regular gymnasts who compete in the high school version of their sport.
“For high school competition, athletes have to change some of their skills from what they usually compete with,” she said, because high school scoring takes other things into account than club-level gymnastics. This “can be very difficult and confusing but they all did so well with it.”
The competitors attended the year’s first club-level competition in February in Kelowna - 22 athletes from Quesnel attended that event - and seven of them are now aiming at the provincials championships coming up at the end of the March. They compete out of the Quesnel Technics Gymnastics Club.
“Now that high school provincials are over, athletes will be switching back to focusing on their Xcel/CCP routines (Gymnastics Canada’s competition programs) for the remainder of the season,” said O’Flynn. “I am so very proud of all our athletes not only for how well they competed but their sportsmanship and great attitudes all weekend.”
The competitors at the high school event were Freya Cormack, Justine Biller, Paige Grant, Emily Grant, Jersey Leeson, Ava Petersen, Katie Singer, Khloe Murray, Reece Hackney, Tahlia Denis, Brail Campioni, and Courtney Kitamura.
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