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Mastering their skills

There was a different feeling during the annual Alpena gymnastics camp held at the APlex. The three day event started Thursday and the camp had a great turnout that featured kids from various age groups and a handful of experienced coaches and instructors helping out.

“This camp is a very special thing. The kids will gain several hours of gymnastics that will help them focus and improve. We have higher level gymnasts that are here to teach and demonstrate the skill perfectly as well as breaking it down into pieces to teach at a high level,” Elizabeth Story-Campbell said.

The first day started off with two camps, a morning and afternoon camp. The morning camp featured beginning to intermediate gymnasts, while the afternoon camp consisted of higher level and advanced gymnasts. There was roughly 70 gymnasts that attended the camp.

Those who attended the camp were fortunate to have knowledgeable instructors on hand to make the three day event a success.

Hub Humphrey is back to help with the camp for the third consecutive year. Humphrey is a University of Michigan alum and was on the men’s gymnastics team during his time in Ann Arbor and was coached by Alpena native Kurt Golder.

“I first got involved with this camp after Kurt told me about it and he asked if I would be willing to help out and I loved it so much that I decided to continue to come back,” Humphrey said. “It’s nice to help kids get exposure like I had in my past and I love being able to give back.”

Humphrey was not the only former Division I gymnast on hand. Risa Perez helped out at the annual event for the first time and was the first female gymnast to help out at the camp. Perez is a graduate and former gymnast at Oregon State University and jumped at the opportunity to come help out and bring her knowledge of the sport to help out many up and coming gymnasts from around the area.

“I think this is really cool. I grew up in a huge town of Las Vegas and coming out to the smaller towns that may not have as many college gymnasts, I think it’s really inspiring for the kids and it’s important for them to see that you can go so far with gymnastics and it can really change your life. Even if they don’t stick with it, it’s still an awesome foundation for many other sports. It’s cool to see how passionate they are about it, that’s really important to me because I get to inspire kids while they inspire me,” Perez said.

Much of the camp dates back to the history of gymnastics that the city of Alpena has in relation to Golder. He began encouraging his gymnasts throughout his collegiate coaching career to come to Alpena and help out during the summer.

This is the first of two camps that will be held during the summer as this event is a yearly camp held in June. The next camp will be held in August that will mainly focus on the bars event that tends to be a more advanced event in gymnastics.

“We’re excited to have a good time and I’m especially excited for our gymnasts to set goals. I don’t want this just to be a camp and have it be just another class. I want it to be something where the kids try and use these hours to get that skill they have been working on and achieve the goals they set during camp,” Story-Campbell said.

The camp will continue later today and finish up on Saturday.

Jonny Zawacki can be reached via email at jzawacki@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5690.

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