Rushmoor Rose Bowl 2014
It has been our pleasure and privilege to take part in Britain’s longest running, and most prestigious, Invitational International for many years. A great training ground for teams and individuals that have aspirations towards International representation it’s also a fantastically fun competition to take part in and caters for Club, Regional & National teams. Acclaimed by our gymnasts over the years as “my favourite competition of the year” it is also loved by our gymnasts parents too.
Our team this year was missing our top performer Claudia Fragapane who was resting having recently returned from a highly successful World Championships. Claudia has won no less than 8 Rose Bowls over four years of competing at this event and there can be no doubt that her participation at RGA’s Annual Rose Bowl has contributed to her fantastic success on the International stage for both England and Great Britain. This year Claudia still attended, supporting Bristol Hawks Team and taking on a new role, signing programmes to raise money towards Rushmoor Gymnastics Academy’s chosen charity ‘Help for Heroes’.
Despite fielding a young team, [also missing from last years team our University graduate, Kathryn Heathcote] with an average age of around 12yrs, Bristol Hawks were delighted to win a place on the podium & the Bronze Medals. A great team effort saw each girl playing their part and working well for the team. Newcomer to the team Caitlin scored for the team on both beam and bars with the ever reliable Ellouise scoring on both vault and floor. Izzy was our top all around gymnast this year with a creditable 19th place very promising for an 11 year old. Rowena was using this competition as a build up to the Espoir British and, despite a promising warm up, had just too many mistakes on the day to make finals this year.She still battled through well for the team. Gabby has made great progress this year and it showed, moving up an incredible 22 places and scoring over 2 marks more than last year.
Caitlin Lochhead Gabby Wild Ellouise Challenger Rowena Needham Izzy Davies. Bristol Hawks won the bronze medals in the Club team section behind an experienced Heathrow Team and Canadian Club Team ‘Champions’. Great Britain ‘A’ Team won overall with former British Champion Lisa Mason from Heathrow taking the individual all around title.
It was with great surprise and delight that “The May Family” were awarded an Honorary Rose Bowl for services to gymnastics. Bristol Hawks Directors Elaine & Mike May received the award after a lifetime of dedicated work developing British Gymnastics by taking on a large number of voluntary roles over the years; coaching, judging and officiating at international, national, regional and county level; inspiring many young people to enjoy the sport of gymnastics; sponsoring individual gymnasts; developing groundbreaking facilities for gymnastics both in Devon [the original ‘Hawks’ gym] & Bristol and supporting their own three children to become international gymnasts for Great Britain. Their story mirrors that of the inspirational Directors of Rushmoor Gymnastics Academy Colin & Bernie Wright whose own list of achievements would fill a book!
THANK YOU Colin, Bernie and all your fantastic team at RGA for yet another memorable year.