Gold for Matt and Jamie as they maintain Honiton’s fine Men’s Pair record

Newly-formed acrobatic partnership Matthew Beviss (10) and Jamie Jeffery (16) maintained Honiton’s recent record for excellent men’s pair partnerships by taking the Grade 3 South West title at last weekend’s regional preliminaries in Taunton.

The pair will now go on to represent the south west region at the national finals in Stoke on Trent in May.

Matt, a pupil at Honiton Primary School, and Jamie, a pupil at The Woodroffe School in Lyme Regis, were competing in their first serious competition together after Jamie joined the club just over six months ago. The duo performed two routines – one ‘balance’ routine, where Jamie holds Matt above his head in static positions and one ‘dynamic’ routine, where Jamie throws Matt in the air before Matt completes forward and backward somersaults.

“Matt and Jamie have come a long way in a very short space of time,” said James Reddy, high performance coach at Honiton Gym Club. “Jamie’s a natural talent, who seems to improve hugely every session he’s in the gym. Matt only learnt to somersault two months ago and he now has four in one routine – forwards and backwards! They’ll now be working hard to perfect their moves and learn a new routine so that they can make the most of their opportunity at the national finals in May.”

In addition to Matt and Jamie’s gold, gymnasts from Honiton also produced some other excellent results at the competition, particularly in the Grade 2 Girls’ Trio event, where – apart from the gold – gymnasts from the club took the majority of the top spots. Emma Saunders, Charlotte Drawer and Megan Quick put in a fine performance to take the silver, and Ellie England, Sharna Curley and Emily Lee took bronze. They were closely followed by Jasmine Waterfield, Francesca Cade and Keira Bonetta in fifth (just one tenth of a mark away from the medals); George Greenyer, Somer Horsfield and Phoebe Simeons in ninth; and Saffron Herbert, Emily Bristol and Faith Symonds in 10th.

“This was an extremely competitive category that included 22 partnerships,” added James. “Less than one mark separated the top 10, which meant that minor errors made a huge difference to the final results.”

Another very competitive category was the Grade 2 Girls’ Pairs event, with 22 entrants. Honiton’s Lauren Davey and Lois Norman took fifth with a score of 25.35 (a score that would have won gold in many of the day’s other disciplines), closely followed by Megan Quick and Isla Cloke in sixth who scored 25.20. In the Grade 2 Out of Age Girls Pair event, Kaci Brooks and Becky Fullard finished in fifth position.

Next weekend the club’s younger gymnasts will compete at their regional ‘grades’ preliminaries in Sherborne, Dorset.

For more information about Honiton Gymnastics Club, visit www.honitongymclub.org or contact hnayler@hotmail.com