Saturday 29th October saw the annual awards presentation for our Squad Class. It was a tough decision for our Squad coaches this year as they sat down to determine who are the deserving recipients of the annual awards for 2015 – 2016. The awards are open to all gymnasts in our Squad class, regardless of their age.
Most Improved Award
The Most Improved award goes to a gymnast who has worked hard during the year to improve her on own capabilities in gymnastics. This year the award went to Rosie Davis, aged 8 from Squad 3.
Rosie has worked hard over the last year to improve her gymnastics in every aspect – strength, courage and determination. On top of this she did very well to improve on her competition results from last year and has learned to take feedback from her coaches very well and work on the points they recommend. Her dedication to training and positive attitude have helped Rosie with her improvements over the last 12 months, gaining extra skills and lots of body strength and conditioning. Rosie also worked hard to achieve a place on the Gymnastics Ireland National Development Squad this year. This is Rosie’s first year winning a Sugarloaf Annual award and one of the youngest recipients to date.
Best Gymnast Award
The Best Gymnast award goes to a gymnast who is a role model to our other gymnasts, in every aspect they are the best gymnast, whether it be commitment, attitude, performance or perseverance. This years award went to Alice Fitzgerald, aged 14 from Squad 1.
Alice has a superb attitude to training, a fantastic rapport with every coach and a positive can – do attitude. She has great commitment to the sport of gymnastics showing this with an excellent attendance record to training and taking the opportunity, where given, to attend extra training sessions. Alice always gives 100% in every session, has a great work ethic and always takes coaches feedback, instructions and requests on board and carries them out to the best of her ability . She trained hard this year to once again compete at the top level of gymnastics in Ireland at the FIG National Championships where she finished in the top 8 in the country to place in the Bars and Floor apparatus finals. This is Alice’s third year in a row to win an award, having won the Most Improved award in 2014 and the Best Gymnast award in 2015.
Sugarloaf Spirit Award
As many of our members are aware, in June 2015, Sugarloaf Gymnastics lost one of our very loved gymnasts Georgia Murphy,aged 13, due to a tragic asthma attack. Georgia was a beautiful girl and a great friend, who had been part of Sugarloaf Gymnastics since a young age. During her time with us she was always so friendly, bubbly and pleasant. Georgia made every effort to make sure that everyone in her group was included and made a great impact on everyone who’s life she graced during her short time in the world. With this in mind, we wanted to honour and remember Georgia and ensure that her spirit lived on in gymnastics, so we created the Sugarloaf Spirit Award in 2015, a beautiful silver trophy engraved with a friendly duck and the words “in loving memory of Georgia Murphy”.
Why a duck? Click here for more information and to understand why we have a wall of ducks and rubber duckies on the wall at Vault.
In it’s second year the Sugarloaf Spirit Award went to Jessica -Mai Maxwell, age 14, Squad 1. Jessica – Mai is so well deserving of this award, as, like Georgia, she always has time for every gymnast no matter what their age or skill level is. She takes time to listen to others and to help others who may be struggling to understand or learn a new skill. She always has a positive attitude in the gym, at competition and can always see the good and positive from a difficult situation in training or competition. Jessica – Mai has volunteered lots of hours to come in and help out coaching the younger gymnasts in Sugarloaf and is very popular among them all!
Congratulations to all of our Sugarloaf Award recipients. We are now in our 2016 – 2017 year and are on the look out for next years deserving recipients!
