The Jasper Gymnastics Club came home with one gold medal last weekend after the Alberta Winter Games qualifying trials in Red Deer, but the four girls couldn’t quite pull off a qualifying performance.

Jasper sent four girls to the trials: Ashley Tassoni, Caitlin Zaniol, Casey Salanski and Katie Quackenbush. While Quackenbush brought a gold medal back in the vault, none of the girls qualified for the winter games in Cold Lake in the new year.

Quackenbush, 15, had the closest competition, winning the vault and keeping second place throughout the entire competition, until she fell off the beam, knocking her out of the top four spots.

“It was so unfortunate, she was pretty unhappy with herself. She’s fifteen. But she came home with a gold medal, so parts of it were good,” said coach Nadia Wassef. At 15, Quackenbush was still two years younger than some of her competitors, who were 17.

More than 20 kids were competing for the four spots in the zone to go to the Games, and while two of them went to 17-year-olds, Quackenbush was still pretty sure of herself that she would earn a spot at Cold Lake.

“Before I went, I was so sure of myself. I don’t know what happened on the beam, I fell on a lot of spots that I don’t normally,” said Quackenbush. “I was just too sure of myself on a lot of stuff.”

Quackenbush said she became overconfident, but after falling on the beam, her overall score went down, bumping her out of the top four.

Wassef said all four girls competed strongly, putting out the best that they could with the experience they had.

Two of the girls, Zaniol and Salanski, were competing for the first time at this level.

The Winter Games don’t have age categories, so Zaniol, who is only 10 years old, had stiff competition against some 17-year-olds.

“It’s a minimum of 10, so everybody just goes into one pool and competes against each other, whereas a normal competition you would just compete against people in your age group. 17 (is the maximum age). It was huge. I mean the younger kids obviously don’t have as much experience as the older ones,” Wassef said.

Two of the four spots went to 17-year-olds.

The zone which Jasper is in for the Alberta Winter Games also has a higher level of gymnasts competing. Wassef said zones like Grand Prairie and Fort McMurray only had about six people competing for four spots, so it is a lot more difficult to qualify in Jasper’s region.

The Jasper Gymnastics Club’s next event will be in Jasper during National Gymnastics week on January 18-22.