Meet Anabelle Julias: the 18-year-old jump rope skipping champion
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18-year-old Anabelle Julias began competitive skipping in 2013 and has been competing and coaching the ACT team, the Jazzy Jumpers, ever since.
Participating in the Australian National Skipping Championships on Friday 27 September, Anabelle was one of 350 skippers from Australia and around the world. Showcasing her skills and talent with her team, for Anabelle skipping is a mix of art and sport and believes that competitions like this deserves so much more recognition than what it is given.
From starting in Year Two in 2013, Anabelle describes how she first got involved in skipping and her initial thoughts before starting.
“It was a club at my school, and when I moved to the school, Dad heard about it… At the start, I didn’t really want to do it, I wasn’t really interested in it, and then I went to it and I just haven’t stopped since. I loved it from the start,” she explains.
When asked about how she feels competing at the Australian National Skipping Championships, she says; “I’m a bit nervous because it is qualifiers for Worlds next year, but I’m also really excited to show everyone what we’ve been working on all year.”
She explains how she wants to qualify in everything for the World Championships and how she wishes for skipping and her team to be recognised worldwide and not just throughout Australia.
“I’m competing in sixteen events this competition, so the goal would obviously be to qualify in everything. The main ones I want to qualify in are definitely my team ones, because we’ve worked really hard, so it would be really great to perform to the whole world rather than just Australia,” she says.
Skipping has become so much more than just repeatedly jumping over a rope. It has turned into a legitimate competitive sport for teams across the world to participate in. People spend many hours every week dedicating themselves to perfecting skipping and the gymnastics that are incorporated into each performance. To have that effort established and recognised is a dream that is becoming more of a reality each day.
“I think every smaller sport always dreams about it being recognised, because growing up, all of your friends are always like ‘Oh, this isn’t a real sport’, so it would be really good to have the recognition and for people to actually see how hard it is, and for people to see what it is,” Anabelle explains.
“Most people just think it’s just jumping over a rope, and to actually see that it does take a lot of hard work to get good at.” .
With competitive skipping becoming more and more popular, Anabelle says that “It’s really great to see it growing every single day.”
Skipping at this level is a commitment that everyone is involved in. Training sessions vary between each team, but Anabelle describes the hours the Jazzy Jumpers devote to practising each week.
“We do three training sessions a week, so Monday, Wednesday and Sunday, and they go for like a few hours. Mine go for longer ‘because I coach as well, but our training sessions usually go for two one and a half hours, ” she clarifies.
“That’s just in training, we also do training outside [of the sessions], we get with our team, do anything extra that we might need to work on.”
Anabelle has plenty of advice for someone who wants to join the Jazzy Jumpers or who just wants to start skipping in general.
“Just grab a rope, you never know what you can do until you grab a rope, and when you have someone telling you how to do it, like so many of the kids are so surprised when they get a trick first go. You can do it, literally just give it a go and you won’t regret it,” she reveals.
According to Anabelle, there are so many things’ people can learn from seeing just a snippet of the Australian National Skipping Championships. From the effort and dedication involved to compete to how it’s more than the typical jump rope activity, she says that it’s fun, it’s active, and it’s impressive to watch.
Anabelle was able to reflect on what she has learned from this experience:
“Definitely, just keep trying,” she says. “I think for anyone who starts a sport young, there’s lots of times when you lose motivation, but I think just sticking through it, and seeing through all of the tough times, because you definitely get better results.”