New England Valkyries

Another Successful Vaulting Workshop!

 
Despite the cold and grey skies, about 20 people came out to try vaulting with us this past weekend. While most were new, there were also a few experienced vaulters who were happy to get back on the barrel. Participants ranged in age from about 7 to 50+ ! How many sports can you think of where men and women, boys and girls of such a wide range of ages can compete with each other?

After a short demo, the team helped participants learn some basic —and some not-so-basic—vaulting skills. There were adults who tried shoulder stands and young children who played the role of flyer, but it seemed like the "click" was the most popular move to try to master.

Gold medal vaulter Eric Weber also volunteer to join us and manned one of the barrels, providing instruction to many eager would-be vaulters. Thanks, Eric.

It's always gratifying to introduce new people to our sport and to see them go from trying to figure out the mount to doing a backward scissors in just a few turns on the barrel.  Several have already signed up for our upcoming January 2nd session—and you can too, just shoot us an email!

Thanks to everyone who participated. If you are on Facebook, you can find us—and some more pictures— there.

You Now Have EXTREME SKILLS!

Thanks so much to everyone who turned out for our first "Kick off Your Boots and Give Vaulting A Go."

We had quite the turnout of brave would-be vaulters, even though it was the hottest day of the summer. After a brief demo where a small group of NEV vaulters dazzled and inspired the crowd, all the participants spent the next hour and 1/2 working on their own moves on the vaulting barrels, then relaxed with a glass of wine and some tasty homemade morsels.

Wine for our event was generously donated by Westport River Vineyard & Winery—and it was fabulous! Thanks so much!  If you're looking for something fun to do, or you're just dying to stomp grapes, check out their wonderful summer series of music, wine-making and the arts.

If you missed the fun, e-mail us and we'll put you on a list to be notified of futre events! Thanks!

A New Barrel from "Performance Vaulting Barrels"

NEV is using a new barrel made by Performance Vaulting Barrels in Michigan. The barrel has lots of nice features—removable (and padded!) handles, adjustable and removable legs, and a nifty tool kit that stores inside the barrel. It's extremely sturdy and wonderfully padded, and we expect many years of high performance from it. This barrel meets all AVA regulations can be used for official competitions. We might make a few tweaks to it to make the legs come off and on very quickly, but really it's more than perfect as is, especially if you don't need to disassemble your barrel every time you use it (and, normally, we wouldn't need to, but we do need to this summer). If you are interested in ordering a barrel like this, visit this link here.

And what a great company PVB was to work with—Gary definitely went above and beyond. If you are looking for a quality vaulting barrel, we enthusiastically recommend Performance Vaulting Barrels!