West Wind gymnast crowned provincial champion

By Lethbridge Herald on May 26, 2023.

Herald photo by JUSTIN SEWARD Amalia Yavitu does a switch split to strattle move at the West Winds Gymnastics Club on Friday.

The West Wind Gymnastics Club wrapped up what was a successful year on a high note recently.

For the first time since 2009, the club saw one of its own, 10-year-old Amalia Yavitu, crowned a provincial champion in the all-around category recently in Airdrie.

Yavitu won the Level 5 all around provincials after receiving the best score in the vault, bars, beam and floor.

“I was really excited and I had a lot of fun doing it,” said Yavitu.

Yavitu thought the competition was tough.

“I think they judged pretty hard,” she said.

She wanted to take from the win that she wants to keep on trying.

“So (in) 14 years, Lethbridge has not had a provincial champion in the overall and she was able to do that,” said Katrina Brandt, West Wind’s women’s head coach.

“So I’m very proud of her.”

Brandt felt Yavitu is  a very well-rounded athlete.

“She gets good grades at school, her attendance at gym is great, she is a hard worker (and) she helps her teammates,” said Brandt.

“So she’s just a really good kid. I think that it kind of shows everybody else that if you work hard, that you can be (a) provincial champion too, and that it is possible in the City of Lethbridge that you can kind of achieve those same results.”

Brandt said it was a lot of hard work on her part.

“Probably a lot of nit picking from me to her and really focusing on those small fine tune details,” said Brandt.

“I think I was a little bit more stressed at provincial championships maybe  than she was. I just say that because all season she produced results over and over. So all the invitationals, kind of those practice meets leading into provincials, she won all of them. There were some competitions where she placed first on all four events and all around. So leading into provincials, the pressure was kind of on. I tried my best to kind of deflect that attention so she didn’t feel that. But you know when you have that many invitationals leading up to provincials, where you’ve won time and time again, that it’s a little bit expected of you.”

Yavitu went down to Victoria for an invitational meet just days after the provincials win and won that event at Level 6.

“So we made the decision to try the next level up (and)see how it goes, so we could plan her summer and the training until next season accordingly,” said Brandt.

“And I think she surprised everyone and she won that event as well in Level 6. So that really kind of adjusted the plans a little bit, that maybe our sights aren’t set high enough. And so we’re kind of working through the summer to level up again and try to hit Level 7 for next year.”

Brandt considered this year to be a successful one for the team.

“So this was like the first full season since pre-COVID that we had a full successful year and the kids, they delivered,” said Brandt.

West Wind saw growth in their program.

“So like numbers wise, we have more athletes on our team as well as we have more kids representing in the higher levels,” said Brandt.

West Wind had 65 athletes competing this year, which was the biggest team in the last five years.

“But our athletes, we were very successful at keeping the quality of the competitive team quite high,” said Brandt.

“So I’m pleased with that.”