Terrace Peaks Gymnastics Club sent eight young athletes to compete in the BC Artistic Gymnastics Championship this year.
Savannah Medeiros earned a gold medal for her performance on beam, competing against 21 others in her age level in Junior Olympics level six (JO 6).
Five Terrace gymnasts earned a top-eight finish in one of their categories at the Port Coquitlam championship April 6-8, and Carissa Nenninger earned the best overall score, placing eighth in her age division.
Gymnasts compete in four categories — vault, bars, beam, and floor — and then scores are tallied based on the difficulty of their routine, with points deducted off that total for each mistake. The perfect score is 10.0 in each category, resulting in an overall score out of 40.
For Medeiros, she secured first in beam, scoring a solid 9.166 points.
Then she struggled in bars, scoring 5.666, and went on to score 7.8 on vault and 8.8 on floor for a total 31.432 points and 19th place standing overall in her division.
Coach Karl McPherson was full of praise.
“One of the things that stands out about [Medeiros], is her power when she jumps. But she’s also very artistic,” he said.
In one balance, Medeiros is standing on the beam, goes on tiptoe, and lifts one foot up over her head.
McPherson says her whole routine was smoothly executed, with consistent balance and little to no body adjustments on her jump landings.
As for other Terrace gymnasts, the highest overall finish went to Carissa Nenninger, who placed eighth out of 16 in JO 6 for her age group.
“To be top eight in the province, that’s huge,” said McPherson, adding that it was her mental game that impressed him.
“She was just aggressive,” he said. “She didn’t let little things bother her. She made a mistake, and then she would just get up there and nail the rest of the routine.”
Nenninger got 34.666 overall, with a fairly consistent score across the board: 8.533 on bars, 8.5 on both vault and beam, and 9.133 on floor.
Haydyn Taylor stood out on floor, earning second place with a score of 9.566. Her overall score was 33.648, placing 14th out of 17.
Others who competed were Rachel Aird, who’s top placing was sixth on floor, as well as Drew Shannon, Kennedy Howse, Lily Macdonald and Finnley Ivens.
McPherson says it was a good experience for everyone, setting their sights high.
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“Competing for so long in the north, they base their gymnastics on what’s in the north, but they don’t get a sense of the big picture,” said McPherson. “I think them being at provincials has really educated them because they could see kids at higher levels.”
McPherson says Nenninger was freshly motivated after she saw other kids her age performing the back tuck on beam (i.e. a backflip on the beam), something she’s been working on for a while.
“And it’s like boom, we come back from provincials and a week later she’s doing that,” he said, adding that the whole team seems to have fresh aspirations.
“They’re really motivated now,” he said. “It’s starting to create a culture that’s going to strive towards excellence.”
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