Melksham gymnasts star at Wiltshire competition (From Wiltshire Times)

Melksham gymnasts star at Wiltshire competition

10:37am Monday 22nd June 2009 in Sport News

Gymnasts from the prestigious Wiltshire School of Gymnastics (WSG) in Melksham again put together many winning performances at the Wiltshire Grades competition hosted by the club last weekend.

The competition was attended by 73 gymnasts from 6 clubs across the whole of Wiltshire.

WSG fielded a total of 20 gymnasts ranging from only 6 years old to 15 years. The day was a huge success for the club with all of their gymnasts passing their grades, 9 of them passing distinction!

The girls from the Wiltshire school also came away with a huge medal tally which finished as 5 gold medals, 6 silver and 4 bronze, a fantastic achievement The Wiltshire Grades are a progressive scheme for county level competitive gymnasts. You start at Wiltshire Grade 4 and have to perform set routines on all the Olympic pieces of apparatus, these are vault, bars, beam and floor.

You have to achieve a certain mark to pass the grade and move onto the next grade. The scheme is also used for very young children in preparation for higher level gymnastics when they are older.

As there were so many gymnasts who took part in this event not all can be mentioned here but some of particular note are as follows.

Competing at Grade 3, in the 7yrs of age category, the Wiltshire Schools squad group performed very well and took a clean sweep of the medals.

Jessica Daykin won the Gold medal and passed with distinction, Paris Cargil won silver also with distinction, Megan Leach won bronze with distinction , Rhian Mackintosh came 4th wtih distinction and Lucy Tiwigger came 5th. Jessia Daykin achieved the highest score of the day.

In the Grade 3, 8 yrs of age category Abigail Elms came 3rd with distinction.

At Grade 2, Aurora King won Gold with distinction and Anna Oakley came 4th.

At Grade 1, Anna Gilbert won the Gold medal with distinction, Tianie Newman came 2nd, Lois Wright 4th and Megan Neathey 5th.

The was also success for the club in the Grade 2, 9&10 years with Laura Brennan taking the silver medal with distinction and Grade 2, 11 years and over with Courtney Shakeshaft winning the Gold medal with distinction and Isabelle Corangi winning the silver medal.

At pre levels age 12, Elizabeth Jones won silver, and at age 15 Lorelle Ayrton also won silver.