Apollo gymnasts have good competition (with photo)

MONTREAL — Five North Bay Apollo Gymnastic Club athletes competed in the Eastern Canadian championships here.

The competition was attended by 282 athletes from Quebec, Nova Scotia and Ontario.

“Our athletes had an amazing weekend,” Josh Tessier, Apollo provincial tumbling coach said. “They all did their best and two ended up bringing home gold medals for their respective teams. They proved how strong a program we have at Apollo and how strong Ontario is.”

Each division had a team competition and Samantha McParland and Stephanie Beauparlant’s teams finished in first place.

In the ‘C’ level category, Candice Healy and Kathleen McParland finished both the compulsory pass and their optional passes well finishing in the middle of the group after preliminaries.

Stephanie Beauparlant ended her prelims in second place, which guaranteed her a spot in the finals. Beauparlant had an impressive finals pass and finished the competition in third place overall.

Nathan Swain competed in the ‘B’ level men’s group.

Swain, who is 10 years old, was up against older athletes and did very well.

After the first day of preliminaries, he was in eighth place, which was good enough to get him into the final round of competition.

He competed an excellent finals pass of round off, whip back, four back handsprings to a full twisting back layout.

“This was a pretty new skill combination for Nathan. We’ve been using this meet as a motivating factor for him and it was great to see him compete the full-twist,” Tessier said.

Swain ended up in seventh place.

Samantha McParland competed in the highest level of competition, the Canadian ‘A’ level and was second after the first day of competition.

McParland was hoping to improve her placing, but finished her finals pass in second, good enough for a silver medal.

“It was an incredible experience for the kids,” Dave Harris, head coach at Apollo added.

“Our athletes are looking stronger all the time. They’re getting lots of great experience from meets like this and it’s really helping them develop.”

Tessier will now move back into the athlete mode and take the next few weeks to prepare for the national championships, which are at Humber College in Toronto May 17-22.
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PHOTO: North Bay Apollo Gymnastic Club members competed in the Eastern Canadian championships in Montreal.