Barry Comprehensive School

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Pupils from 3 local schools have joined together in order to perform their gymnastic skills to a national audience. Gymnastic team members from Barry Comprehensive School, Ysgol Bro Morgannwg and Ysgol Sant Curig have only been training together for a year and celebrated their first anniversary performing a gymnastic display routine at the London Festival of Gymnastics. The collective name for the team is Ysgolion Bro Curig y Barry Schools Gymnastics Display team. The team consists of 10 boys from Barry Comprehensive School, 3 girls and 1 boy from Ysgol Bro Morgannwg and 4 girls & 1 boy from Ysgol Sant Curig. The age range varies from 8 to 17 years old and the team are coached bi-lingually.

The team danced to 3 consecutive pieces of music in costumes. The lengthy routine, which consisted of Rhythmic Gymnastics, Sports Acrobatics, tumbling and dance elements was given a sustained round of applause from start to finish.

The ream was only put together last October in order to represent Great Britain at the World Gymnaestrada, which will be held in Dornbirn, Austria during July 2007. The team will need to raise £16,000 in order to perform at this event and have taken part in numerous fundraising events such as Car Boot Sales, Bingo nights, Sweet sales, bag packing, golf tournaments, sponsored cycle races, fete’s, penny collecting and the Three Peaks Walk.

The team coaches were very pleased with the performance at the London Festival. Coach Emma Thompson commented, “ I was very proud to watch the team perform a spotless routine. I was especially proud of the gymnasts who up to a year ago had never heard of Sports Acrobatics. This is the discipline of gymnastics, which is similar to circus work where gymnasts balance on top of each other, a discipline that the boys from Barry Comprehensive have performed very successfully at the British Championships over the past 3 years. The youngsters have developed from novices to very confident performers within only a year. The pupils performed in front of several hundred people from all over the U.K., and despite some initial nerves produced a great performance. It was great to see these youngsters leave the performance floor area beaming with pride at their performance.”

Adam Case, a school based gymnast from Barry Comprehensive, added, “ It was amazing! They had darkened the audience and put stage lights on us. I was a little nervous beforehand, but as soon as I stood on the floor I really enjoyed it. It was brilliant to hear the audience clap throughout our routine.”

Emma Thompson would like to thank Anne Thomas (gymnastic after school club coach at Sant Curig) Paul Byrne and Ian Hawkins for all their help throughout the year with both coaching and driving the team to London.

Photos: The Ysgolion Bro Curig y Barry Schools Gymnastics Display Team