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Samuel Clarke named 2011 Gymnast of the Year
Over 150 gymnasts, coaches, friends and family members arrived at 1066 Gymnastics dressed to impress for the club's third annual awards evening. The 2011 Club Awards opened to a video montage highlighting many of the club's achievements over the past twelve months. Throughout the evening the audience was treated to a series of video clips played on large TV screens into the gym as each of the coaches took to the floor to present the club's awards across a range of disciplines and categories.
Development awards were presented to gymnasts who have shown the greatest progression in training. Picking up development awards were Shannon Belcher (Women's Artistic), Oliver Evans (Men's Artistic), Abbie Curd (Four Piece), Joshua Boreham (Tumbling), Cordelia Mitchell (Trampolining), Kai Bishop (Floor & Vault), Lewis Palmer (Team Gym Primary Boys), Josephine Chambers (Team Gym Primary Girls), Samuel Hammond (Team Gym Junior Boys) and Chloe Palmer (Team Gym Junior Girls).
Achievement awards were presented to gymnasts who had enjoyed the strongest performances or results in competition; Amie Anderson (Women's Artistic), Callan Hall (Men's Artistic), Summer Jennings (Four Piece), Jake Townsend (Tumbling), Imogen Jarrett (Trampolining), Harrison Todd (Floor & Vault), Benjamin Hilmer-Ewel (Team Gym Primary Boys), Hannah Turner (Team Gym Primary Girls), Liam McKean (Team Gym Junior Boys) and Gemma Morgan (Team Gym Junior Girls).
Medals of achievement were presented to those who had taken the club name all the way to national level by competing in a British Gymnastics final; Callan Hall, Jake Townsend, Samuel Clarke, Benjamin Hilmer-Ewel, Samuel Knight-Farman, Dylan Evans, Lewis Palmer, Samuel Boreham, Harry Markfort, Kyle Wilson, Alannah Wood, Gemma Morgan, Jasmine Clarke, Talia Hutchinson, Chloe Palmer, Samuel Hammond, Luke Freeman, Josh Millard, Jack Copper and Liam McKean.
The Sticker Trophy is an award contested by many of the squad gymnasts who collect reward stickers in the gym every week. At the end of the year the totals were counted and the award was earned by Lauren Jeanes.
The Beth Tweddle Award was presented to the club by Olympian Beth Tweddle when she opened the club in July 2009. She asked for the award to be presented each year to the most determined gymnast. On it's third presentation the Beth Tweddle Award was presented to Lauren Venkateswarlu who suffered an unfortunate accident in the gym which resulted in a broken arm. She was very brave and only missed one training session. Despite being so young and small and being placed in a very large, heavy cast, she worked extremely hard to work on areas of her training programme that she could while she recovered and then went on to compete very well at the end of the year.
The club's top award, the Gymnast of the Year trophy was presented to Samuel Clarke. His main discipline is Men's Artistic and he represented the South East at his grades national finals. He also filled in for another gymnast on the mixed-gender Tornados team at the Team Gym British Championships. These two national events were just a week apart and Sam did tremendously well to contribute strongly to two different teams in two different disciplines, mastering ten routines in total. He went on to juggle both disciplines for the remainder of the year, competing in another two Team Gym competitions including an international event as well as maintaining his Men's Artistic programme where he competed at British Championships and was ranked second in Sussex at County Championships.
Head Coach Matthew Hart commented "It was another fantastic club event and our biggest awards night yet. We were packed with supporters and thrilled to be presenting so many awards from new competitors and young, developing gymnasts right through to those medalling at national events."
DESIGN BY MATTHEW JASON HART
