MICHAEL KIRAL / L’Observateur / June 17, 2000

LAPLACE – The second annual Ivanov’s Gymnastics Academy Summer Camp is in full swing.

Or is that full vault? The camp, conducted by Anatoly and Larissa Ivanov, offers the campers a large range of activities. A typical day starts with the campers gettingtogether and doing warm-up exercises.

“That way, whatever they do, they will be ready,” Larissa Ivanova said.

From there, the campers are usually split into groups and do different forms of artistic gymastics, rotating from the vault to the bars to tumbling and the trampoline.

After lunch, there is a cool-down period where the campers do a variety of arts and crafts. Through the first week, the girls, which usually range from10-15 a day, had done everything from T-shirt coloring to making paper animals and drawings of themselves.

The campers can also play a variety of board and organized sports. There isalso the option of watching videos that range from the Cirque du Soleil to gymnastics movies and past international events such as the Olympics and the European Championships.

“We have gymnastics kids who want to practice more,” Ivanova said. “Theywant to make more friends and spend time together.

“They want to be in the gym more than they can in regular classes. And theylearn a lot. We have three new girls and they love it. They want to comeback. We have three or four girls who want to join our regular team.”One of the returning gymnasts is Yvette Triay of Metairie who said she gets more opportunities to work on her gymnastics at the camp.

“Everything,” Triay said of what she liked about the camp. “It gives us moretime to learn new tricks.”Jennifer Morales of Norco concurred.

“We get to do gymnastics and work out,” Morales said. “We get to work onnew things.”For Lauren Joseph of Metairie, her favorite thing at the camp is getting to go on the trampoline.

The camp runs from 9 a.m. till 3 p.m. Monday through Fridays. In other news from Ivanov’s Gymnastics Academy, two members of the Academy were recently honored for their accomplishments.

Coti Roussel received recognition from Louisiana State Representative Robert Faucheux for receiving Top Awards at the 2000 Gymastics Coaches State Meet.

Sarah Thomas, a senior, received an award from USA Gymnastics for her dedication to the sport.

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