Level 5 State Champ

Shannon Kennedy, 11, of Sandy Hook recently won the USA Gymnastics Junior Olympic Level 5 state championship held at Westhill High School in Stamford. Kennedy, who trains at Olympia Gymnastics in Brookfield and is a sixth-grade student at Newtown Middle School, said, “States were fun – I wasn’t nervous at all! I got to make friends with a lot of girls from other gyms.” Kennedy also won the uneven parallel bars event at the state competition and competed in five additional meets this season, taking top honors in the all-around at the Connecticut Judges Cup and The John Hancock Invitational. She had been training at Olympia for four years under coaches Steven Infante, Brian Bakalar, Laura Kanniard and Allyson Travis.