PCYC gym club is small club of the year
Gymnastics NSW has awarded Umina Beach PCYC Small Club of the Year at its gala annual awards night in February.
The club's gymnastics coordinator, Ms Judy Tolhurst, also received an award for her dedication to the sport.
Ms Tolhurst was recruited by the Umina club two years ago to boost the number of members it had who were participating in gymnastics.
Since then Ms Tolhurst has taken the number of PCYC club members participating in gymnastics from 50 to 140.
She said all the gymnasts at Umina PCYC were from the local area and range in age from three to 14.
Children participate once a week in a one or two hour course in recreational gymnastics, women's competitive gymnastics, trampolining or free gymnastics.
The Gymnastics NSW Small Club of the Year Award was open to gymnastics clubs in NSW that had less than 300 members.
The application had to demonstrate the programs that the club had implemented and grown, the education of coaches and how they represented the club in the field of gymnastics.
Umina PCYC was chosen as one of three finalists, the other two were Sydney clubs, "and then we got the gong," Ms Tolhurst said.
Her son, Lachlan, is an accredited gymnastics coach at the PCYC, having joined as a volunteer after helping his mother in her early days with the club.
Ms Tolhurst said she attributed the club's success during the past two years to the "quality of its programs and the passion of its coach".
Lachlan Tolhurst and a former PCYC Umina gymnastics coach and Empire Bay resident, Ms Leela Cross, have been chosen as part of a NSW Performance Gymnastics team.
They will travel to Denmark in July to compete against 16,000 gymnasts from around the world for a week and then they will participate in a week of coach's education.
Mr Tolhurst was also on the NSW Performance team last year.
Performance gymnastics is a team-based mixture of dance, tumbling and acrobatics set to music.
Umina PCYC offers recreational gymnastics Mondays to Thursdays for ages three to 10.
Women's competitive gymnastics is open to children from the year they turn six and involves the traditional combination of bar, beam, floor and vault.
The club had four members participating in competitions in 2016 and expects to have around 12 this year across women's competitive gymnastics and trampolining.
The club also offers Free G.
"Free G involves getting from one point to another as fast as possible across as many obstacles as possible," Ms Tolhurst said.
There are currently 14 boys, mainly in Year 7, participating in Free G at Umina PCYC>
Media release, 14 Feb 2017
Interview, 14 Feb 2017
Judy Tolhurst, Umina Beach PCYC
Reporter: Jackie Pearson