The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

17 Sports Oakville Beaver SPORTS EDITOR: JON KUIPERIJ Phone 905-845-3824 (ext. 432) Fax 905-337-5571 email sports@oakvillebeaver.com · THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 2009 HERB GARBUTT / OAKVILLE BEAVER PHOTO SUBMITTED Pictured left to right, Oakville Gymnastics Club members Mikaela Gerber, Sabrina Gill and Cory Paterson all won medals at last week's national championships in NIKKI WESLEY / OAKVILLE BEAVER Hamilton. Making the jump no problem for OGC's Gerber By Herb Garbutt OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF When Mikaela Gerber first sized up the competition in junior division at the Elite Canada competition in December, she was suddenly overcome by doubt. "They just looked so much better," the 13year-old said. "I didn't feel like I belonged there." A pep talk from coach Kelly Manjak and her fourth-place finish helped alleviate those concerns. And Gerber's confidence and abilities have only continued to grow from there. Last week at the Canadian Gymnastics Championships at McMaster University, she earned the all-around silver medal, as well as a gold medal for floor exercises. More importantly, as Gerber watched the senior competition, she wasn't the least bit intimidated. "I'm almost at that level," she thought. "I could go to senior and do well." Gerber wasn't the only Oakville Gymnastics Club member to land on the podium despite jumping up a level. Cory Paterson earned the all-around silver in tyro while picking up gold medals on high bar and parallel bars. Coach Greg Jackson said though Paterson was the two-time national champion in argo, that by no means guaranteed success this year. "This is usually a transition year, and it's a very difficult one," he said. "Typically they're at the age where they have a growth spurt, you have to learn new compulsory routines and the skills are a lot harder and it gets scary. Some can't get over that fear." "It takes a while," Paterson said. "You get scared, but you work through it." For Gerber, it was her performance on the uneven bars at Elite Canada that really helped her reach new levels. Though she considers it her weakest event, "It takes a while. she made the event You get scared, final. "That made me but you work want to come back through it." and work that much harder," she said. Cory Paterson, on Over the past learning new skills year, she has added as he gets older seven new skills to her bar routine and the improvements have improved her ability to compete for all-around titles. Giving a little extra effort has never been a problem for Gerber. She joined the gymnastics club in her hometown of Cambridge when she was just three, following her sister Aisha -- a former national team member now at UCLA -- into the sport. But in her first day in the recreational program, a coach noticed her and began working with Mikaela. Ten years later, and two years after a switch to the Oakville club, Gerber's typical day begins at 5 a.m. She's in Oakville for training at 7 a.m., is home-schooled by her mom from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the club's boardroom and then trains again from 3-7 p.m. Fifteen hours after waking up, she's back at home. From doubting her ability six months ago, Gerber now has set her sights set high. After another year of junior competition, her "mission" is to make the senior national team and help Canada qualify for the Olympics at the 2011 world championships. Clubmate could also makes national team There, she hopes to have some company. Clubmate Sabrina Gill will become eligible for senior competition in 2012, and Gerber would like nothing more than to have her as a teammate representing Canada. "It would be amazing," Gerber said. "She's a good friend and competing with and against each other would be so much fun." Gill, who won the novice high performance division at Elite Canada, finished fourth all-around at nationals while earning silver medals on beam and vault. A seventh-place finish on bars, usually her best event, kept her off the podium, but Manjak said she bounced right back to win the silver on beam. And he expects a similar comeback from nationals for Gill, who along with Gerber represented Canada in France in December. "It just wasn't her day," he said. "She's an all-around athlete and she showed international quality on all her events. She going to be world-class level." Paterson also got his first taste of international competition this year, as the Grade 8 Falgarwood student went to events in Belgium and Las Vegas. Those extra competitions helped him work on his new routines -- he placed fourth all-around at Elite Canada -- as he worked toward polishing them in time for nationals. The 14-year-old said placings were not as important to him as getting comfortable with his new routines. "Performance-wise, I just strive toward getting better because I need to get better," he said. Jackson said while there is room to add difficulty to the routines (something he and Paterson will do over the coming months), they decided on a conservative approach for nationals, focusing on Paterson's ability to deliver clean performances. "You can add something in so the difficulty goes up (a decimal point), but then it becomes a mathematical game," he said. "Is that (decimal point) going to be a positive or are you going to lose more on execution?" Paterson finished with a total score of 163.450, two points behind Mississauga's Tariq Dowers, who won three of the six individual events. Paterson finished no worse than fourth in any event. Other Oakville Gymnastics Club members to post top-10 finishes at nationals were novice high performance competitors Elise Bolger (fifth on vault, eighth on floor) and Jordyn Pederson (seventh on bars, eight in allaround), and open women's competitor Bianca Jordaan (sixth on floor).