Hat-trick of titles for Linton gymnasts

Teams of Year 3 & 4 gymnasts from eighteen South Cambs primary schools took part in the annual School Games Gymnastics Competition on Wednesday 29^th January at Comberton Village College.

The gymnasium was silent, and the atmosphere concentrated whilst the children demonstrated their skills on the vault and floor in front of the judges and on looking spectators. At stake was the chance to represent South Cambs School Sports Partnership at the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough School Games Spring Festival, with the top two schools qualifying to take on the best schools from across the County.

After a welcome and warm up led by the partnerships sports leaders the competition started. The mixed teams of six children from Great Abington, Castle Camps, Bassingbourn, Coton, Linton Heights, Harston & Newton, Haslingfield, Cottenham, Monkfield Park, Willingham, Burrough Green & Dry Drayton schools all had to perform a vault and then either a floor or body management routine with each performance judged and given a score out of 10. Each child’s individual score in both disciplines was then combined to give an overall team score out of a maximum of 120.

The competition was fiercely contested and after all of the scores were added up less than 7 points separated the top 10 teams! With consistently strong performances throughout their whole team Harston & Newton A team finished as runners up, improving on their 5^th place finish from the previous year. Linton Heights Junior School where the clear winners on the day though as they put in some excellent performances in all 3 disciplines and retained the title of South Cambs champions for the third year running.

Both Harston & Newton & Linton Heights now go forward to represent South Cambs SSP at the County School Games Spring Finals on Thursday 26^th March at Huntingdon Gymnastics Club.

The top 3 scoring individuals in the competition were also awarded with medals with some extremely close scores.

1^st Isla (Linton Heights) 18.6

2^nd Scarlett (Coton) 18.5

3^rd Olivia (Linton Heights) 18.4

Qualified young judges from Comberton, Cambourne, Linton & Swavesey Village Colleges did an excellent job in scoring the performances of all of the competitors, keeping the competition running smoothly and encouraging and supporting the young gymnasts.

Spirit of the Games awards were nominated by the sports leaders and given out to those children who strongly demonstrated self-belief and passion in their performances with the following children receiving recognition; Haylee (Willingham), Imogen (Willingham), Jake (Castle Camps), Toby (Willingham), Jassiyah (Coton), Elsie (Great Abington), Annabelle (Monkfield Park), Felix (Haslingfield).

Claire McDonnell, South Cambs School Games Organiser said,

“It was another great competition. It’s nice to offer children the opportunity to represent their school and compete in a more artistic type of event such as gymnastics. It always amazes me how well the children perform under quite intense pressure, it is so quiet in the gym and there are lots of other children, staff and parents watching on. All of the children did exceptionally well and should be proud of themselves.

Whilst we recognise and celebrate the winners and wish Linton Heights and Harston & Newton the best of luck at the county finals next month the main purpose of all of our events is to ensure the children have an enjoyable time and to encourage them to achieve their personal best and I think they all did that today.

The young judges also did an exceptional job, we couldn’t have run the competition without them, they were focused and efficient throughout and even supported a couple of the gymnasts through their routines when nerves got the better of them.”

There were also some lovely comments from the children taking part on what they thought of the competition;

“I enjoyed all of it, it wasn’t as scary as it thought!”

“It was lots of fun”

“We really enjoyed doing the vault”

FULL RESULTS