The Polarettes are vaulting from one location to another this season.
Members of the Whitehorse gymnastics club competed in Las Vegas in January and will be in Calgary March 17-19.
They just competed at the International Gymnix competition in Montreal March 9-13.
“This is the largest competition we’ve attended to date and brought international gymnastics superstars,” said Polarettes head coach Kimberly Jones. “The girls competed in their respective levels, and then got to watch international finals where we saw gymnastics legend Oskana Chusovitina compete — she’s 41 years old and still competing on an international stage.”
Polarettes’ Emily King placed top-10 in all her events in the Junior Olympic 8 (JO 8) division. She took fifth on beam, eighth on vault, 10th on floor and bars, for eighth all-around.
Teammate Ella Paldy finished 14th all-around in JO 6 with seventh on the beam and 10th on floor.
Maude Molgat, in JO 7, tied for 14th on bars en route to placing 21st all-around.
Polarettes Ava Jampolsky and Riley Boland both competed in JO 6.
Jampolsky tied for 21st on the floor and placed 29th all-around. Boland claimed 24th on beam and 31st all-around.
Montreal marked Boland’s first time competing in JO 6 and her first time traveling with the team.
“These girls are still learning how to compete and handle nerves, they are doing a great job improving their skills in the gym and work really hard,” said Jones. “We’re going to work on our mental training more in the gym and practice performing to larger crowds.”
Polarettes had another first in Montreal. Lily Witten became the first Yukon gymnast to compete in Aspire, a national program designed to develop the skills of young gymnasts striving to compete at the national and international level.
“The program is designed to focus on building strong basics and is an intensely competitive field,” said Jones. “Many of the gymnasts Lily competed against were incredibly experienced and she did a great job performing her routines — the competition was just very strong.”
Contact Tom Patrick at tomp@yukon-news.com