Young Belfast gymnast Soley Laverty, 9, flying high after representing Northern Ireland in major UK competition
Soley Laverty is head over heels at the moment. That’s nothing unusual for a gymnast, but there’s an extra spring in the young Belfast girl’s step these days. She recently competed in the British Gymnastics national finals, finishing ninth on floor and 15th overall in the UK.
And that’s not bad when you’re just nine years old and the only one in Northern Ireland to qualify for the National Excel 2 Championships – the highest competition for gymnasts of her age.
For Soley, who is following the sport’s elite Excel pathway and is a member of the Northern Ireland performance squad, the Stoke-on-Trent competition was her first-ever national event.
But Mandy McMaster, managing director of Salto Gymnastics Centre in Lisburn where Soley has been training since she was just three years old, is convinced that this is only the start of the youngster’s time on the big stage.
“Following the Excel pathway, qualifying for national finals and finishing fifteenth all around and ninth on floor is fantastic,” she said.
“Soley is very talented and extremely hard working. She also has the correct mindset; so passionate about gymnastics and she trains for perfection. This talent with hard work ethic only comes around every decade or so.”
Soley, a P6 pupil at St Joseph’s Primary School in Ballyhackamore, initially only went to Salto just to play on the trampolines – which were open to the public on Mondays.
But a senior staff member spotted something in the three-year-old and asked her parents for permission to put her into a squad trial.
Six years later, she’s training 16.5 hours, five days a week as a member of the Elite 2 squad at Northern Ireland’s national gymnastics centre. Of all four apparatus – vault, bars, beam and floor – her favourite piece is bars.
David Carleton, Salto Head WAG (Women’s Artistic Gymnastics) coach, who trains Soley, was named Sport NI’s Sportmaker Performance Pathway Coach of the Year recently. The award recognises the achievements of a coach working with emerging and young performers on a pathway to high performance.
To date, the head performance squad coach has catapulted several gymnasts in their careers, with six members representing Gymnastics Ireland and 10 athletes currently in the Northern Ireland development squad.