The 2018 – 2019 season for our Recreation Members was amazing, the best yet! We are really looking forward to what the 2019 – 2020 season holds and are looking forward to seeing our existing members return and to welcoming new members.
Parent & Child Sessions & New Recreation Members
September saw lots of new members from age 3 upwards begin their gymnastics journey with us. We had lots of new faces at our weekly Parent & Child sessions on Wednesdays as some of our previous attendees made the big move to attending classes on their own and have been doing so well in structured Mini Gym classes. This Summer saw P & C sessions on Friday afternoons book out almost every week.
Our Recreation program is our biggest program at Sugarloaf Gymnastics with boys and girls taking part from age 3 up to teenagers as well as adults in their 40’s! Sugarloaf Gymnastics holds a very high member retention rate, with many of our current members now in their teens who have been with us since they were age 4, it is fantastic to see and particularly very good to see girls still involved in sport as they hit their teens.
Adult Gymnastics
We had some fantastic new members join our Adult Gymnastics class this season, each of these adding invaluable “craic” to the existing great atmosphere we already have on Thursday evenings. Our adults got more brave and stronger as the year went on. The season culminated in our first adult gymnastics full Bar routine and of course a pizza party and games for our last class! Adult Gym is always a fun class, while it might seem daunting at first, everyone works to their own level or ability and works on what they enjoy.
Awards and Recognition
Every day we heard our “new skills” bell ring to announce a gymnast achieving a new skill, the gymnasts ring the bell and the whole gym claps and cheers for their achievement. As well as this our “Wall of Fame” board was filled with the names of gymnasts who achieved something new every month. The gymnasts take home a certificate to mark their new skill achieved! We gave out nearly 800 new skill certs to again recognise the gymnasts new skills achieved!
We also awarded our first ever annual Recreation trophies for Most Improved Gymnasts 2018 to Matilda Nolan (Senior category) and Lauren Doyle (Junior category). The gymnasts were chosen by the coaching team as the recipients of these awards as they made great improvements in their gymnastics throughout the year. The trophies for 2019 will be presented in December 2019, so the coaches have been on the look out for gymnasts who have tried really hard to make and implement changes in their gymnastics throughout the year in order to improve in their skills, self confidence and understanding of the sport.
In our Competitive Advanced Recreational group who are a competitive group competing in regular Gymnastics Ireland competitions we presented Best Gymnast to Lucy Willoughby for her continued hard work during training sessions, support to her peers in her group and her excellent attendance record. The Most Improved trophy went to to Sive Jenkinson who really worked hard to up-skill since joining the group, taking corrections on board in order to gain new skills and improve her existing skills.
Events
December saw our gymnasts show off their choreographed floor routines at our annual Christmas Showcases as well as some skills on other apparatus during our week long Christmas Showcase event. We welcomed Parents/Guardians in to watch the gymnasts perform and show off their skills. From our youngest at 3 to our teenagers we saw great performances and parents were lucky to see a mixture of ability levels at each Showcase across all of our gymnastics programs.
March saw 35 gymnasts selected to represent Sugarloaf Gymnastics at the first ever Gymnastics Ireland GymStart Challenge Competition at the National Indoor Arena in Blanchardstown where over 500 gymnasts competed across 4 levels and multiple age groups in the hopes of winning titles on Floor, Vault and the All Around competition. The girls and boys cleaned up at this flagship event, with Eva Carey even scoring a perfect 10 on Vault. They have set the bar for those who will be invited to represent Sugarloaf at the next GymStart Challenge Competition event. Read more about it here.
Our season culminated in our annual GymSTART Challenge Awards event. Once again we invited Parent/Guardians in to watch the gymnasts perform but this time not within a group but on their own, a big challenge to over come for some gymnasts! Our GymSTART Challenge Awards is a bespoke program designed by the Sugarloaf coaches to tie in with our syllabus to reward and recognise the gymnasts efforts in As we know a lot of gymnasts want to do gymnastics competitions but as the standard in Ireland is extremely high and can also be costly to families we also introduce a competition element to it and award gold, silver and bronze to the top scoring gymnasts in each level and group. Over the course of a week levels certificates and medals were given to every gymnast to recognise their efforts throughout the year to show that they can perform. Our younger gymnasts in our Mini Gym Classes also welcome parents/guardians into the training centre to watch their class and see all of the skills they learned this year as well as important non gymnastics skills such as listening and learning to take instruction and turns!
What’s new this year?
We look forward to our September 2019 season when we will finally be introducing our Tumble Track Feedback Report Cards. As gymnastics is a complex sport we have been working on this program for over 2 years and wanted to have it just right before releasing it. Gymnasts will be assigned a level and each term they will work to achieve a level and hopefully move onto the next level. The program will enable parents/gymnasts to track the gymnasts progress through report cards which will be taken home at the end of term/level.
We will be awarding our Star Gymnast each month from different age groups. Gymnasts who try very hard each month will be chosen by the coaching team to receive a certificate and be crowned our Star Gymnast of the month and will have their photograph featured on our social media channels.
We are on the look out for new skills achieved to feature on our Social Media channels so gymnasts time to get those new skills, let’s take a video and become famous!
