While lots of people were sunning themselves at the beach during the weekend of January 12-13, a large group of dedicated coaches and athletes took part in GymSchool.
GymSchool is a coach development weekend which included a multitude of practical coaching courses and workshops aimed at intermediate and higher-level coaches across all competitive gymnastic sports. A range of wonderful sport specific and generic specialists both international and domestic presented at GymSchool. For the first time we also held a tumbling clinic led by Australian presenter Wei June Lee.
In total we had:
• 82 coaches attending qualification courses
• 52 coaches attending upskilling workshops
• 24 athletes attending a tumbling clinic
We were very pleased to welcome two incredible international presenters from outside our Gymnastics NZ community.
• Mike Hunger (Artistic Coach USA) – Mike is the owner and head coach of Twin City Twisters in Minnesota. The club has produced a number of elite gymnasts, collegiate gymnasts and Junior Olympics national qualifiers.
• Wei Jun Lee (TUM Coach Australia) – Wei is a tumbling specialist who lives in Sydney. Wei was assistant Australian Coach at the 2018 World Age Group Competition for tumbling.
We would also like to acknowledge the New Zealand Olympic Committee who supported the event with Olympic Solidarity funding to assist with the costs of holding the event at the impressive facilities at Pulman Park. Events such as GymSchool not only allows for coach development, but it was also a time for people to network and make connections with other members of the community across a number of gymnastics codes.
We are sure that the coaches who attended will have taken back some awesome new ideas and implemented into their own classes back at their gyms.