5 – 6 December 2009
The Cambridge team returned from Manchester with 8 medals after a thoroughly enjoyable weekend of bouncing at the Manchester Open.
Jacob Sharpe won the elite double mini trampoline competition, snatching a well-deserved victory on his final pass. Joel Taylor and Sarah Pearcey came 4th and 5th, while in the juniors, Helen Smith and Aislinn Brown were 3rd and 5th respectively.
On the trampoline, the elite team of Sarah Pearcey, Helen Smith and Jacob Sharpe collected 3rd place in the team competition and the synchro pairing of Lucy Loong and Kate Davies came 4th out of a very large field.
After 4 hours of driving up the A1 and across the peak district in a car with no hand break, we arrived at the general warm-up and familiarisation session very lethargic, but still keen for some bouncing. The Manchester Uni club had 8 trampolines set up, but only 1 of them was any good. Their double mini was brand new and we all found it difficult to get enough spring out of the mount bed to make mount somersaults possible. Nevertheless, it was a useful session and after a healthy dinner from an internationally recognised pizza restaurant chain, we forewent the opportunity to go to Club Phoenix in favour of our hotel beds, which were located immediately next to Manchester United's Old Trafford ground.
The next day, Gareth Tear was first from Cambridge to compete in Intermediate Plus. Three tricks into his first routine, Gareth managed to break a spring, resulting in the first re-bounce of the day. Not to be outdone in the breaking stakes, the next competitor decided to go one better and broke his leg. He lined out a barani (tuck), landed on his feet but must have landed slightly awkwardly. Unwilling to move him from the tramp, the competition organisers instead moved the competition away from him. All 7 other trampolines were shifted about 5 m across the hall so as not to unduly disturb the patient. Ambulance paramedics treated the patient and after he was ferried to hospital, normal proceedings were resumed.
The advanced trio of Katie Bertrand, Aislinn Brown and Katharina Kohler all performed well and finished very close in the final scores. Aislinn's performance was all the more impressive considering that she missed the previous night's sleep due to the Selwyn ball. Our sole novice competitor, Zanna Szlachta, bounced very well for her first inter-university competition and will hopefully carry that good form into the BUCS championships next year. Intermediates Lucy Loong and Kate Davies both bounced well, but little wobbles in their voluntary routines knocked them out of medal contention.
Our elite team of Jacob Sharpe, Helen Smith and Sarah Pearcey were all competing routines at the very limit of their ability, and were not expected to finish in the medals. For them, the competition was all about finishing their routines. Jacob finished both routines, but clipped the frame pad on the way down from his 8th trick, resulting in execution scores in the low 6s (which is pretty good for a 7 trick routine). Helen and Sarah both had interruptions in their set routines, but both of them put that disappointment behind them and completed their voluntary routines, which greatly pleased their coach. Despite having 3 interrupted routines between them, their scores were sufficient for 3rd place in the elite teams event.
The Saturday night social was a 'caveman and cavewoman' themed affair at the Manchester equivalent of Curry Mahal. Unfortunately, partly due to my forgetfulness and partly because I didn't think it was important, I didn't tell anyone in the team about the cave theme. I was quite surprised, however, to find that we were the only people at the dinner who weren't dressed up. Some not-as-bad-as-we-expected curry and many, many units of alcohol later, we moved on to a proprietary national vodka drinking establishment and after we extracted the maximum possible fun from there, we headed home to rest for the next day of competition.
Day 2 was double mini and synchro. Due to the lack of entries, the boys' and girls' competitions were combined into one 'juniors' competition and the men's and women's comps became 'seniors'. The juniors were required to do one somersault per pass while the seniors had to do two. Despite never having been on a double mini tramp before that day, Aislinn was able to land 2 solid passes and qualified for the final, along with Helen who courageously fought off the mental scars of doing a half backsault (tuck) to face the previous week in training. The final was a one pass, zero start final, so everything was on the line. Helen withstood the pressure to claim 3rd while Aislinn was a creditable 5th.
With only 9 entries in seniors and the top 8 qualifying, it was all about that one pass in the zero start final. Jacob coped best with the pressure, nailing backsault (straight) half out (pike), the highest DD pass of the competition, to take victory. Joel, Sarah and Katie all landed solid passes, but could only manage 4th, 5th and 6th respectively.
The pressure of double mini lifted, it was time for synchro. Kate and Lucy were advantaged by not competing in double mini as it gave them extra opportunity to practise their synchro. And they made the most of the practice time by putting in a superb routine that scored 9.8s for synchro and only just missed out on a medal, finishing in an agonising 4th place out of 33 pairs.
Joel Taylor.
|
|
|
Photos
|
