Young sports in a spin

By Stuart Teather
A PAIR of local gymnasts will be shooting for the big time when they compete at the Australian Junior Championships in Brisbane, this month.
Clematis resident Ethan Cox and Emerald’s Bryce Haesler are heading up to the championships hoping for success after gaining selection in the state squad for the Level Six division, following two trials in recent months.
Both 12 years old, Cox rates the vault as his best apparatus while Haesler has been in good form on the pommel horse, recently picking up a gold medal at the state meet.
Cox, a Grade 6 Beaconhills College student, was keeping his expectations low, declaring he expected to go “okay”.
He tipped his team-mate Haesler, who attends Menzies Creek Primary School, to do well at the Championships.
“Probably Bryce (will do well) because he’s been doing it longer,” he said. “I reckon he’ll go good.”
Cox began in the sport at four years old when his mum put him in the kindergarten gym.
Haesler, the younger of the two by a matter of months, began gymnastics at age two in a similar program.
Since then the pair have come along in leaps and bounds, training up to 15 hours a week at Knox Gymnastics Centre.
Both gymnasts spread their wings in other sports — Cox plays soccer for the Sherbrooke Rangers, and Haesler plays basketball at Cockatoo.
Despite competing at the National Championships, Cox said he had other aims in his blossoming gymnastics career.
“My goal is, when you compete in level 10 at my gym, you get your photo taken and you get put up on a big poster on the wall, and I’d like to get that.”
The competition began on Monday at Chandler Stadium, Brisbane.