Berwick gymnasts Emily Haskayne, Ashlee Caligari, Teagan Stuart, Charli Andrew, Hannah Blair and coach Melanie Wursthorn (front).BERWICK gymnastics coach Melanie Wursthorn took five gymnasts from the Berwick Gymnastics Club to the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra for a fourday clinic in October.
The clinic was called Towards 2012 and the AIS holds them four times a year with gymnasts chosen as potential 2012 Olympic team representatives training at the facility for around 36 hours a week.
It was the first time Berwick, a recreational YMCA gym club, had undertaken a National Levels program.
The five girls were tested by some of Australia’s top coaches and trained in a worldclass gymnasium.
The mornings saw the girls invited to watch training sessions that included gymnasts who will be competing for Australia in next year’s Commonwealth Games with the clinics held in the afternoons involving four rotations of tumbling, ballet, bars, trampoline, vault or conditioning.
The selection process was intense and although no clinic participants were selected to continue, the girls were happy to be given the opportunity to train at the venue and be exposed to some of Australia’s top gymnasts.
