A young Turner Valley resident has jumped her way from skipping in the schoolyard to the competing on the national stage.
Samantha Warkman had the opportunity to compete at the Canadian National Rope Skipping Championships held at SAIT in Calgary on July 21.
Warkman, 13, first qualified for provincials with three other girls from her Turner Valley club and was the only one to advance to the national competition.
“I was really excited for the competition, but I was also nervous because it was my first year going to nationals,” said Warkman.
She said she started skipping rope for fun when she was in elementary school and it has now grown into her passion.
Warkman is part of the Turner Valley rope skipping club that was started as a lunch hour program at the Turner Valley Elementary School.
Dawn Jardie runs the small town rope skipping club along with a couple other volunteer moms and is also the head coach for the team.
“It started as a really small program, but the girls got so good they needed to do something with it,” said Jardie. “It was just a natural progression that they were starting to compete at a higher level.”
She added this is the first time members of the rope skipping club have competed at this level and they also are involved locally with the Heart and Stroke Foundation.
“We perform demonstrations at schools for the Jump Rope for Heart program, which helps the girls fundraise for the Heart and Stroke Foundation,” said Jardie.
The students who competed at the provincial level ranged from Grades 4 to 8 and in the club overall there are students as young as Grade 1 taking part.
At the national competition Warkman performed an individual rope skipping routine, which is similar to a floor routine in gymnastics, but it is performed on a hardwood floor instead of a mat.
There are four main areas the skippers are judged on including speed, power, endurance and freestyle routine.
“I think my freestyle is my strongest point because I get to be more creative with the routine,” said Warkman.
Noel Warkman, Samantha’s dad, said he is thrilled his daughter made it to the national level of skipping and said Samantha worked extremely hard to prepare for the competition.
“She was practicing every day to get ready. She was a little nervous, but her program was almost flawless,” said Noel.
As an added bonus, Warkman was able to use the gym facilities at the Turner Valley Elementary School where the gym floor is almost identical to the one used at nationals.
He also said SAIT put on a high-quality show for such a large-scale event.
“It was absolutely fantastic. It was a really tremendous setup at SAIT,” said Noel. “There were even teams from the United States so I was quite impressed and thought it was first class all the way.”
Warkman will be in Grade 8 this September at Oilfields High School and she said she plans to continue skipping and hopefully progress to international competitions.
“I love skipping, it’s so much fun. I would definitely like to compete at any level I could,” she said.
Warkman is still waiting on the results of the Canadian National Rope Skipping competition.
