Gymnasts shine bright

The future is looking very bright for a group of six young Hills gymnasts.

Sophie Finnegan, Sienna Melrose, Eva Fountis, Evie Borg, Emma Osmond and Lily Simonsen. Pictures: Peter Kelly

• All-round success
• Squash star at 81

The future is looking very bright for a group of six young Hills gymnasts.

The Castle Hill RSL Gymnastics International Level 8-10 Women’s Gymnastics Squad are spending this week at a high performance development camp in Canberra.

The entire squad were invited to attend the Gymnastics Australia Women’s Artistic Gymnastics Team Future camp at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, where they will receive development in a range of areas including nutrition, media skills and technical instruction.

The six squad members, aged between nine and 11, have trained together for the past 12 months under head coach Zoltan Mirko.

The squad train six days per week.

All six members of the squad are achieving in the top 10 per cent of their age group in Australia, and half of the squad are ranked as “High Achievers” by Gymnastics Australia.

Two members are ranked number one in the country for their age group, one is third and another fourth.

The team, which was nominated for the Young Sporting Spirit Team award, train 23 hours per week with only Sundays off.

They will be hoping all their hard work pays off when they compete at the State Championships in August, followed by the Australian Classic in Victoria in November.

The young stars were also recently featured in a new advertisement for Clubs NSW’s Give Your Best campaign.

Nominations have opened for the Local Sports Stars program in the areas of Junior Sports Star (individual or team), Young Sporting Spirit (individual or team) and Service to Sport.

Nominate by visiting localsportsstars.com.au