Jordan Twigge, 23, is the NZ champion in double mini-trampoline and will be competing in the Indo-Pacific Championship at the PGA Arena, Napier, from today. Photo / Warren Buckland
Jordan Twigge, 23, is the NZ champion in double mini-trampoline and will be competing in the Indo-Pacific Championship at the PGA Arena, Napier, from today. Photo / Warren Buckland
Trampolining was up there for him as a youngster but the clash with rugby commitments on Saturday mornings meant Jordan Twigge had to go with what his parents suggested.
"I asked mum if I could get into it but it was a conflict," says Twigge, of Palmerston North, who isthe New Zealand double mini-trampoline champion and a favourite in the discipline when the five-day Indo-Pacific Trampolining and Tumbling Championship begins in Napier from today. For the record, rugby was just as much a passion as trampolining for the then youngster who enjoyed yo-yoing from the age of 4 on a trampoline in the backyard of their Feilding home, under the watchful eye of parents Nicola and Wayne Twigge.
It wasn't until elder sister Alannah attended Feilding High School that Twigge found some formal traction with a sport on the backburner.
"She asked the school if I could have a bounce and that's where I met my first coach, Lindy Crawford," he says, pointing out the coach felt he had shown enough potential to be considered for the first team at a recreational level.
Crawford then asked the 15-year-old if he was keen to travel to Waipukurau with her to receive some coaching from Wayne Marsh and he obliged in term four in 2008.
"I was still stuck with Palmerston North Boys' High School second XV rugby," he says, later enjoying a rugby tour of Europe with the team.
However, in 2010 he gave up rugby and began a liaison with Marsh via the Ricochet Trampoline Club, at the War Memorial Hall, Waipukurau, that has spanned eight years.
"In 2011, I missed out on the New Zealand team on a technicality for not filling out a form properly."
The following year he did slip on the silver fern, representing the country at the Australia National Championship and the Indo-Pacific championship in Sydney, and has flown the national flag since.
"I wouldn't be anywhere today without Wayne. He and I click and he knows the best way to get the results out of me," says the bloke who won silver in the 17-plus age category of his maiden Indo-Pacific Champs in 2012.
This weekend's champs at the Pettigrew-Green Arena, Taradale, will be the third one for the 23-year-old who has five Aussie nationals under his belt and has also flipped, tucked and somersaulted his way to the World Championship in Daytona Beach, Florida, in 2014.
At his second Indo-Pacific in Sun City, South Africa, he finished fourth in the senior men's category.
Twigge competes tomorrow evening against four others in his senior men's discipline, comprising another Kiwi, Lachlan Smith, two Australians, Jarrod Spear and Ryan Hatfield, and a South African, Sebolai (Offering) Tlaka.
The five athletes will perform two routines during the preliminary and final phases with judges scoring on the degree of difficulty and excellence.
Twigge, who manages a trampoline park in Palmy North, won his senior men's national crown in Invercargill a fortnight ago.
The double mini-trampoline isn't an Olympic sport but he is hopeful the IOC will see it in a different light someday with other gymsports events.
"I'll definitely be going for gold here," he says.
To put the challenges in perspective, Twigge reveals he was concussed shortly before the Invercargill nationals, putting him out of the code for three months.
"I was training and mucking around. It was supposed to be easy stuff but I over-rolled and hit my head on the ground," he says of the practice session at a mate's house in Palmy.
Olympian Dylan Schmidt will lead the Kiwi team into a trampoline battle against South Africa, Australia, Japan and Canada, in what should be a crowd-pleaser, with world-class flips and tricks.
Ask Twigge what the prerequisites of a promising trampolinist, he replies: "Good spatial awareness. You have to be agile and have a degree of natural talent.
"If you've got the drive to do something, you can do anything," says the self-taught somersaulter.
Rotorua hosted the last Indo-Pacific champs, in 2008.
