Team Alaska gymnasts capture AWG silver

Four girls from different parts of the state came together for a silver-medal performance Wednesday during the gymnastics team competition at the 2024 Arctic Winter Games in Wasilla.

The team event was closely contested, with Alberta North edging out Alaska by less than two points for the overall title. Team Yukon finished third.

“They did well today, and they’ll do great on Friday,” team coach Trish Bessert said, looking ahead to the individual competitions.

Billing itself “the premier sporting competition and cultural gathering of and for the Arctic north, the Arctic Winter Games are a biennial multi-sport event hosted in a different location around the Arctic region. This is the first time that Mat-Su has hosted the Games, which were last held in Alaska in 2014, in Fairbanks.

The 2024 Games is the second go-round for Bessert, who coached the gymnastics team last year in Wood Buffalo, Alberta, at the competition postponed by Covid from the previous year. The Sitka resident has been coaching gymnastics for more than 20 years. The dynamics of coaching in an event like Arctic Winter Games brings its own set of challenges. Team members come from different backgrounds with different coaches who they’ve worked with for years, in many cases.

“I can give out pointers and try to help out,” Bessert said. “But it’s really about getting comfortable in the gym, comfortable with me as a coach, and comfortable with each other.” She said it was important to her to select her team this year from different areas of the state. “Gymnastics in Alaska is a close family,” Bossert said. “Bringing together girls from four different gyms is really cool. They’ve competed against each other, now they’re cheering for each other.” The team consists of Ella Sabroski, 17, from Anchorage; Jillian Doyle, 16, from Wasilla; Abby Fitzgerald, 15, from Fairbanks; and 10-year-old Charli DeVore, from Eagle River. Under Bessert’s guidance, they have bonded quickly, and her efforts have not gone unnoticed.

“It’s a lot of work being a coach,” Fitzgerald said, to nods of agreement from her teammates.

“She’s a good coach,” DeVore said. “Everyone has been working together.”

For the remainder of their Arctic Winter Games experience, that work will be focused on Friday’s individual events and improving on what they’ve learned this week. “The goal is looking at mistakes that can be easily corrected,” Bessert said. “The goal is not to go out and beat other people, it’s to do better than you did last time. You’re competing against yourself.” Doyle, a sophomore at Career Tech High School in Wasilla, has been training at Denali Gymnastics, site of the AWG competition, since 2020. Her assessment of what lies ahead sums up one of the overarching themes of the Games.

“As long as everybody has fun, that’s what’s most important,” she said.