Young gymnast has a competitive spirit
At age four Auviyaa Kirubaharan loved doing flips, but when she started climbing the furniture her parents enrolled her in gymnastics.
“My parents thought it would be safer if I went somewhere more professional,” said Kirubaharan, now 14 and in Grade 8 at James Strath Public School. “I’ve loved gymnastics ever since.”
Last week, Kirubaharan won the Level 3 (14+) overall gold medal at the Gymnastics Ontario Level 3-5 Championships in London May 31 to June 3.
She led a very successful outing for Champions Gymnastics which brought home one gold, three silver and three bronze overall medals.
It was Kirubaharan’s first time competing at provincials and it didn’t start so well when she fell on her first event, bars, which is usually one of her best. She still managed a fifth-place finish on bars.
“My coaches are very supportive and they told me to shake it off. You have three other events you are really good at,” she said.
She then placed first on beam in her second event recapturing her confidence. She placed second on floor and eighth on vault which placed her first overall.
“I fought through on all the other events and became provincial champion,” said Kirubaharan.
Champions head coach Marcel Rene said Kirubaharan has always shown a competitive spirit and needed it .
“The scores are so tight that generally speaking a fall will put you out of the medals,” said Rene. “But Auviyaa regrouped and had three really strong events after that. A fall is a 5/10th (of a deduction), so if you can make up a couple of a tenth here or a couple of a tenth there, you have three events to make it up. She was strong on her next three and made no mistakes. She had no room for error at that point.
“We’ve always known she’s a competitor. Just to get to provincials she’s had to compete in qualifiers against some pretty good kids. In Levels 3, 4 and 5 we put a lot of emphasis on perfection because they are the basic skills you need to move into the optional system in Levels 6 and up.”
Hayden Kells won the overall silver in Level 3 (14+). Also winning silver were Hayley Evans (Level 3, Age 9) and Adriann Fluke (Level 5, Age 13).
Earning overall bronze medals were Niru Namulla (Level 3, Age 13), Isabelle Galeazza (Level 3, Age 12) and Allyssa Metcalf (Level 3, Age 9).
Champions also won the Level 3 team silver medal out of more than 80 teams.
“Overall our kids pretty much did what they were trained to do,” Rene said. “Most of the categories had 200-plus kids in them and most of our kids were ranked in the top 10 going into it so we expected to have the kind of results we did but it’s always exciting to have a provincial champion. There is so little separating first, second and third ... any one of them could have won the gold medal.”