AraMista will represent AAC and Portugal at the 14th Eurogym 2024 in Bodø. The cost of the trip and participant card is around €1400 and we want to try to make it easier for our gymnasts to pay for this unique experience.
The largest sports section of the Academic Association of Coimbra (AAC), has more than 500 gymnasts training, distributed across the areas of Competition, Representation, Training and Leisure. With a technical team of 30 members, they ensure correct activity, in a training situation, for more than 100 hours per week and adequate preparation for participation in around 50 events spread across the country.
However, the Gymnastics Section has experienced, throughout its existence, several difficulties in financing its activity, resulting in several factors, namely the type of activity it develops, which needs updated and appropriate equipment, in order to allow gymnastics practice in safe conditions. Over the years, the Gymnastics Section has managed to obtain some financial support, largely through sponsorships, “negotiated” by athletes, parents, friends and other contacts, but also through activities carried out by the classes, aimed at raising funds ( sales, competition snack-bars, organization of events, etc.), which made it possible to achieve some of the objectives that the Section and its gymnasts set themselves.
In this 2023/2024 season, one of the important objectives is to participate in Eurogym 2024, an European event, organized by the International Gymnastics Federation and which will take place in Bodø, Norway. This event, which has around 4,000 registrants from more than 20 countries, is one of the largest single-disciplinary European sporting events, only held every 2 years and aimed at group classes aged between 12 and 18. years.
AraMista has been participating in this event without fail since 2012, now going on its 6th participation. This class is the most recent Demonstration class to appear in the Gymnastics Section of the Associação Académica de Coimbra, since 2010. It is made up of around 40 gymnasts, aged between 11 and 15 years old. Its objective is to represent the AAC in the area of Gymnastics for All, where there is a combination of group acrobatic figures, alignments, choreographies and various gymnastic elements, as well as mini-trampoline jumps, with the aim of representing them in soirees Gymnastics, demonstrations in schools/Associations, district events (Ginástica ao Centro, etc.), national (PortugalGym and GymForLife) and even international (EuroGym). The development of this area and class has been extensive and successful, motivating the practice of the sport and stimulating individual and group capacity, both at the level of sporting practice and at a personal and social level.
However, participation in the event, which is fully supported by the participants, involves a significant expense, based on the Participant Charter, food, transport, accommodation and national equipment, which translates into around €1400 per person. On the part of the gymnasts and the Section, all expenses were reduced to a minimum, with the use of canteens, sleeping in classrooms and plane transport, but even so we are still far from having collected the necessary funds for participation.
Therefore, we now intend to launch the challenge, so that you can be our partners and help us in this effort, making the class available to collaborate in initiatives under your responsibility and where we can extend this association to “Ginástica da Académica”.
AraMista no Sarau de Natal da Secção de Ginástica 2023
