Name Shavahn Church | Club Heathrow Hometown Tarzana, California | |
 | ||
Country represented United Kingdom
England Born May 3, 1989 (age 34)
Los Angeles, California ( 1989-05-03 ) Discipline Women's Artistic Gymnastics | ||
Former countries represented United States Former coach(es) Don Peters, Yu Feng | ||
Shavahn Church - 2004 Junior US Classic Uneven Bars
Shavahn Church (born May 3, 1989 in Los Angeles, California) is a British gymnast who lives and trained in California. She formerly competed for the United States but decided in 2005 to represent Great Britain.
Contents
Career
Church made her major international debut at the 2005 World Championships in Melbourne. Not fully recovered from an injury and severely out of competition practice, she placed 20th in the all-around.
Church was a member of the English team for the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. Due to an injury to captain and world bronze medallist Beth Tweddle, the team had to compete with only four members, and were unable to challenge Australia for the gold medal. Instead, in the last rotation, they were in a dogfight with Canada for the silver. Church's bars routine secured second place for the team. In the all-around, Church was in medal contention until her beam routine, where a narrow save after a large wobble was not enough to prevent her from dropping behind, and she finished fifth. In apparatus finals, she bounced back, finishing second on bars to Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs of Canada.
Church was also a member of the British team for the 2006 European Championships in Greece. She had hopes of more success on bars (her highest Commonwealth Games score would have qualified her to the European finals), but injury struck in the qualifying rounds and she was unable to complete the competition. Later in 2006, she underwent surgery, and the recovery kept her out of further competition that year.
In 2009, Church announced her retirement from gymnastics.