Amanda Scott is the aerial silks trainer at Arrow Athletics in North Jackson and recently produced the fourth annual House of Misfits aerial silks production with the students in her classes last month.
This past weekend, Scott represented the United States in the World Pole and Aerial Championships in Kielce, Poland.
She competed in the aerial hoop event.
“It’s a very gymnastics-type sport,” Scott said after she’d arrived in Poland for the competition, which was most of last week. Her competition was on Sunday, the last day of the event.
In aerial hoop, a metal hoop about three feet in diameter hangs about five feet off the ground, and the competitor will perform different stunts and movements in the hoop that were judged by a panel, who were basing their scores on difficulty, how well the movements were performed, fluidity of the motion and innovation.
“This sport is really big in Europe and South America, so a lot of the competitors are from those areas,” Scott said.
There were 39 countries represented with the Latin American countries in Central and South America and the Eastern European countries being the ones listed with the most competitors.
Scott has been performing aerial sports for fitness for a few years now after being introduced to it while going to a gym in Charleston, S.C. When she moved to Jackson a couple years later, she brought aerial sports with her and found a gym that had silks in it and took it back up there.
She’s been teaching aerial silks at Arrow Athletics for about five years now.
Scott wasn’t listed among the top finishers in her event on the competition’s website, but she said the experience of learning from more experienced aerial hoop artists is something she could work with.
“That’s how you get better at anything you do, right? See what more experienced people with more knowledge are doing,” Scott said. “I know some of the other members of Team USA who competed in other events were telling me how difficult the hoop can be simply because it’s painful to maneuver on it, but it’s been a fun experience that I’m glad to be a part of and to represent Tennessee and the United States.”
Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news
