Aerobics: School champions snatch smiles between breathes

By CATHERINE MASTERS

The girls at the national schools sports aerobics championships harbour a secret dream.

They want to compete in the Olympics. While sports aerobics is not an Olympic sport yet, they hope it will be by 2008.

They reckon the event is gruelling and skilled enough to qualify.

With painted faces, the competitors leaped through their routines at Selwyn College in Auckland yesterday. Their smiles were such a constant feature they could also have been brushed on.

Marie Stechman, the executive director of New Zealand Gymnastics, which runs the event, says gymnastics and aerobics are similar.

Competitors would not feel aerobics was taken seriously until it became an Olympic or Commonwealth Games sport.

But the Olympics were far from the minds of some who travelled many miles to make the tournament.



One girl came from Otago, others from Gisborne and the Bay of Plenty.

Alana Sargent, aged 10, from Gisborne, was one of the slightest and youngest girls there. She loves aerobics and the thrill of performing to the loud music onstage.

"I find it fun and entertaining," says Alana. "You have to move around a lot ... I just like doing the dancing."

One organiser likened her to a fire cracker.

Alana followed her 15-year-old sister, Jasmine, into the sport.

The girls' mother, Karen Sargent, says schools are promoting aerobics as a serious sport.

Her daughters would be very disappointed if they could not get to competitions.

"They love getting out there. I suppose they love the glitz."

Both girls spend a lot of time practising, Jasmine several hours a day.

Chief judge Nicky Donaldson, an aerobics teacher from Auckland, says sports aerobics is highly competitive and she admires competitors most for the effort they put in.

"These kids have trained so hard, especially the kids who have come from schools and do not belong to clubs.

"You can't just get up there and do a jazz dance, which is what's happening with some of the kids. Aerobics is based on cardiovascular fitness. It's an artistic sport based on constantly moving around the stage."

And, in among the sea of girls, sits Tony Donaldson of Avondale College, the only boy competing and Nicky Donaldson's son.

Tony says he prefers soccer and diving but the aerobics help him on the field and in the pool. And, the 13-year-old says, he takes his hat off to all the girls who perform: "It's a lot of work ... It's tiring."