On Saturday March 20th the first competition for groups in Holland was held in Gorredijk.
This competition is the first of two competitions to qualify for the Dutch nationals. Only 50% of the
participating groups can qualify, so it was really tense especially when there were only two groups
competiting.
SV Pax competed in categories 1B, 2B, 3B, 2A and 1A. 2B, 2A and 3B had to compete in the morning
competition so they had to be in Gorredijk very early. The group of 2A was one of the first groups in the competition.
The group consist of Roxanne Mooijekind, Christel Grimbergen, Michelle Tjon, Kimberley Borchers and Martine Tromp.
The only other competing group in this category came from De Badhoeve, a very strong rival. Pax had won the last competition,
but they would have to do a really good routine to beat them again. Unfortunately things didn't went out as we hoped, although there
were good parts in the routine there were some big mistakes also and Pax had to put up with silver.
The group of 2B consist of Joanne van Drie, Meghann Kenselaar, Anouk Bos, Shela Kenselaar and Inge Breider. Individual they all compete
in C-level, so it is a big challenge to participate in B-level for groups. They did two routines; one with hoop and one with ball and ended
on a 6th and 3rd place.
The 3B group was one of the last groups to compete in the morning. This group consist of Tessa Rietbergen, Demi Aarts, Nicole Tjan and Elise van
Casteren. For all it was the first real group competition so they had to get used to the crowded warming up area and other stuff. Also they had to wait
very very long before they could do their routine. Still they did very good, only in the end there were some mistakes and they managed to win a gold medal!
In the afternoon the groups of 1B and 1A had their competition. The 1A group (Melanie Kap, Tessa Blommesteyn, Maaike Hoogstede, Lisa Vos, Valerya Boeravkina and
Roxanne Mooijekind) had to start with ribbon. There were mistakes already in the beginning of the routine, but halfway the routine two ribbons got tight up in eachother
on several places. We had to continue with the two reserve ribbons and it costed a lot of time, we performed about 15 seconds with only three gymnasts. Altough a difficulty
in group doesn't even count if one gymnast doesn't performs it well, we still managed to get the highest score in Technical Value. But we got in 4 points for execution, so we ended
really low in ribbon. Hoop-ball was a lot better, but we had one big mistakes and I was told that it looked very carefull. Eventually we ended 2nd.
The last group of Pax was 1B, consisting of Vera van de Ven, Carien Lohman, Benthe Voorneveld, Annelotte Vos, Meghann Kenselaar and Joanne van Drie. Originally Marjolein Werner was in
this group, but she got an injury two weeks before the competition so Meghann and Joanne both learned one routine very quickly. Their hoop-ball routine went very good, altough it didn't
score very high. In clubs there were some mistakes. The group ended 8th (hoop) and 7th (clubs).
This obvisiously wasn't a succesfull competition for Pax, so we hope we will do better next competition on April 24th.