Local gymnast, nine-year old Justice Ginnis, brought home the gold from National and Provincial level competition over the weekend.
Ginnis who trains in Trampoline and Tumbling at Gymnastics Adventure in Regina attended the Aerials Invitational on April 1st in Prince Albert.
The competition brought out 43 gymnasts, aged nine to 18, who competed at the National level and Provincials levels A-D.
Trampoline and tumbling consists of three events: double mini trampoline, tumbling and trampoline. Trampoline requires the gymnast to perform two routines, one compulsory and one optional. The compulsory routine consists of pre-set skills which have to be executed one after the other without breaks or extra jumps and judged on performance and execution only. The optional routine contains skills picked by the gymnast to perform and is judged on performance, execution and difficulty.
Double mini trampoline is a smaller trampoline that the gymnast runs up to and jumps onto and performs a skill landing back on the trampoline and executes a dismount onto a mat. The gymnast again does two routines with different skills.
Tumbling is done along an 84 foot sprung floor where the gymnast performs two routines, one compulsory and one optional, that contains different skills such as twisting, somersaulting and flipping.
Ginnis’ first event was Provincial D Tumbling which had 13 gymnasts competing. She performed her two routines and received a combined score high enough to win the gold medal.
The next event saw 19 gymnasts compete in the preliminaries for Provincial C Double Mini Trampoline.
Her score was high enough to put her in nineth place and move her into the finals where she performed two more routines and placed seventh overall.
Her final event of the day was Provincial C Trampoline which had 19 competitors perform, unfortunately her combined score was not high enough to place her in the top ten.
Trampoline and Tumbling is gaining momentum in the gymnastics world with more gymnasts joining every year. In 2000 the sport of trampoline made a huge step forward as it was recognized as an Olympic sport when it made its Olympic debut at the games in Sydney, Australia.
Ginnis’ coach, Jamie Schafer, is the Gymnastics Saskatchewan’s High Performance Trampoline and Tumbling Coach which has had six gymnasts make the Sask First Team this year that went to Alberta April 7-8 to compete in the Alberta Provincials.
One of the gymnast was able to compete with the team Canada in Birmingham, England this past November where he placed fifth in Men’s Double Mini Trampoline in the 17-18 age category.
Ginnis will be attending the Provincial Championships which will be held in Yorkton on April 20-22, 2012.
