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Crofton gymnast excels by winning two B.C. Winter Games medals

Stobbe now has four medals in two Games appearances
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Brooklyn Stobbe with her B.C. Winter Games individual silver and team bronze medals. (Photo by Don Bodger)

Dynamic Crofton gymnast Brooklyn Stobbe has won four medals in two trips to the B.C. Winter Games.

Following up on her success from Penticton in 2016, Stobbe earned the individual silver medal and the team bronze with the Island zone during the latest edition of the Games that wrapped up in Kamloops Sunday.

Stobbe competed in four events in the Junior Olympic Level 8 category. She recorded fourth-place marks on the vault (9.2) and the floor exercises (9.275), eighth on bars (9.15) and ninth on beam (8.9), but her consistency led to a second-place all-around total of 36.525.

“I felt a bit like it was more fun this time,” said Stobbe, 12, a Grade 7 student at Crofton Elementary School who was only 10 during the last Games.

“Last time I was just kind of there. I didn’t have many friends.”

Stobbe still managed team silver and individual silver during her first B.C. Winter Games experience.

She considers the floor to be her best event and that was indeed the discipline where she scored the highest. The beam is also one of Stobbe’s specialties, but “I had a big wobble in beam,” she noted.

The team events ran Friday and the individual competition Saturday at the Games.

Being there before, “it helped with nerves,” Stobbe indicated. “I knew if I didn’t do good, I had already accomplished something.”

She received a royal send-off from friends at school and teachers gave her a ‘good luck’ card.

It didn’t take long for the Duncan Dynamics Gymnastics club member to make her presence felt against tough competition.

“I saw two people from other zones that were there in 2016,” Stobbe observed. “Most people this was their first time.”

“I think being the same time as the Olympics got everybody in the spirit,” mom Rowena Stobbe pointed out. “It looked like a mini-Olympics.”

At the trials for the Games, Brooklyn Stobbe qualified in first place and went to a Comox meet as a tune-up and placed second all-around. She’s now working on her Level 9 while training with the Dynamics in Duncan up to five times a week.

“I like challenging myself to do this and it feels good to accomplish new things,” she explained.

Stobbe competes against herself as much as anyone else. “I try to beat my personal best,” she said.

During spring break, Stobbe will be attending trials for Team B.C. in Abbotsford to make it into the Western Canadian Championships. The B.C. Championships are in April and there’s also invitational meets on her calendar that include the Duncan Orca event at the end of April and the Garden City meet in Victoria.

There’s talk of moving gymnastics from the B.C. Winter Games to the Summer Games, which would keep it in line with the Olympics.

“My goal is to get to nationals and I want to make the Olympics, but it’s probably not going to happen,” noted Stobbe. “I’m going to try.”



Don Bodger

About the Author: Don Bodger

I've been a part of the newspaper industry since 1980 when I began on a part-time basis covering sports for the Ladysmith-Chemainus Chronicle.
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