source : the age
When Sophie Day tells people that her hobby is calisthenics, the recurring issue is that the response is usually “What’s that”?
“We need a Netflix series to put us on the map,” Day says, promising that a documentary capturing their hard-slog rehearsals, the backstage drama and impeccable hair, make-up and spray tans would be “a good watch”.
A physically demanding team sport that was invented locally and runs in families, calisthenics combines dance with acrobatics, marching and use of apparatus such as rods and clubs.
The standards and sacrifices required at the senior level can be brutal.
Day has driven a round trip of 220 kilometres from her home in Geelong to Boronia, where her team trains, three times this week, to attend practice. Sometimes training with her team, Regent Calisthenic College, lasts for up to four hours meaning she gets home at 11.30pm.
But Day is hoping her efforts will pay off on Sunday at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda, where Regent will take on five other clubs in the calisthenics state championships, in the most elite level, CaliChamp.
It’s the calisthenics equivalent of the AFL grand final. The rivalry is fierce and expectations sky-high, but sometimes things happen that are out of your control.
At last year’s event, Siena Tainsh, from Ceres Calisthenics Club – a model and girlfriend of North Melbourne AFL footballer Zane Duursma – injured her knee while performing on stage. (Tainsh has recovered and will compete this Sunday.)
Unlike mainstream sports like AFL where players earn six and seven-figure salaries, elite calisthenics participants do it for the love, and have day jobs.
Day, who has been a calisthenics girl since she was five, works as a police custody officer and estimates she spends about $3000 annually to take part in the sport.
Having moved to Geelong from Mount Gambier in 2021, Day joined Regent, despite the long drives, after admiring the passion and artistry of the club’s routines, which she watched online.
Brooke Synnott, Regent’s co-principal, said her club was “probably in the best position” to win on Sunday since its revival in 2009 after a 12-year closure.
Regent was runner-up at last year’s state championships. And out of the three major senior competitions so far this year, Regent has won one, and came second in another.
Brooke’s grandmother, the late Enid Feltham, founded Regent in Balwyn, in Melbourne’s east, in 1939, and taught for 58 years before retiring.
In the last 20 of those years, Enid’s daughter Diane Synnott coached the senior team to 18 wins at the then pinnacle South Street competitions in Ballarat.
But by 1997 the pair were exhausted, says Brooke, and folded the club.
Then aged 16, Brooke says she was “devastated” but forged a successful career in dance and musicals.
In 2009, Brooke and Diane decided to reopen Regent. Brooke said she wanted to try teaching and also says it was “in the blood”.
Brooke said a win this Sunday “would be hugely satisfying for everyone who has been with us since we reopened”.
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