Scottish Championships, Perth, Bell's Sports Centre, 20/21st June 2009

Even though the last 6 months had been marred by injuries the national title was as hard fought for as ever. The girls from DGC 2K Kirsty Campbell, Jordan Archibald and Hannah Kilcullen came to defend their team title for the third time and clearly had the individual junior title on their minds too. Kirsty didn't show her double pike back somersault on floor because an injury to her foot had stopped her from practicing tumbles until 2 weeks before the competition. However, this didn't stop her from performing each routine with great focus, skill and attention to detail. She had no falls throughout the competition and qualified with the highest beam score for the apparatus finals the next day. Wow. 
 
Jordan Archibald, the Espoir Champion from last year, started confidently on bars - highest score! On to the beam. Warm up had gone well and Jordan worked her routine cleanly until the round-off for her dismount nearly missed the beam altogether. She managed to avert catastrophy by quickly deciding in mid-air to change from a 1 1/2 twist to a full twist with a little tuck. On floor adrenaline gave her more height in the last tumble than she had bargained for...over rotation - fall. What a shame. On vault she was back to full form and showed both her vaults with massive flight and controlled landings. The result was another top score. Excellent. 
 
Hannah started nervously on bars where her feet came off the low bar too early to do her bar change to the top bar. A noisy clonk was to be heard as she headered the high bar. Even after this she finished her routine with an amazing double tuck somersault which rose well above the height of the high bar. Beam looked nice and stable until she performed her difficult C-spin which proved too hard to control on this occasion. Next piece was floor and Hannah had clearly made up her mind that she was going to fight back. She performed her routine beautifully, worked hard on clean landings and straight legs as to not to give any marks away. Her vault was also superbly hit and gave her the highest tsukahara score of the day. 
 
The result of all this was:
-DGC2K are once again Scottish team champions!!!
-Kirsty Campbell is the new Junior champion!!!
-Jordan Archibald is the runner up!!
-Hannah Kilcullen came 5th!
-Kirsty and Jordan were selected to compete for Scotland in the upcoming UK School Games
 
In the apparatus finals on Sunday the results were as follows:
Vault:
1st Holly Ramage (Lasswade), 2nd Kirsty Campbell, 3rd Jordan Archibald who competed her Yurchenko straight with full turn for the first time!
 
Bars:
1st Jordan Archibald
2nd Kirsty Campbell, Holly Ramage
 
Beam:
1st Kirsty Campbell and Jordan Archibald, this time with a nice flighty 1 1/2 twist dismount
3rd Hannah Kilcullen who demonstrated that the difficult C-spin can be controlled!
 
Floor:
1st Holly Ramage
2nd Kirsty Campbell
3rd Jordan Archibald, this time without the fall