This weekend close to 500 gymnastics will fill Guildford Recreation Centre during the 2024 Carol Lenz Memorial Classic meet, March 8-10.
Around 50 of those gymnasts will represent Surrey Gymnastic Society, host club.
This year’s meet will honour former athlete Luke Van Harmelen, who died last September.
“Luke’s dad is a longtime supporter of our gym and (is) in charge of our hospitality for the meet this year, as he has in past years,” Melissa Murao, vice-president of Surrey Gymnastic Society, told the Now-Leader.
“This year we will be giving away an award to each male and female athlete per session that inhabits the qualities that we all loved about Luke.”
Luke Van Harmelen was a retired gymnast who had represented B.C. from 2014 to 2020, according to a post on gofundme.com. “When Covid-19 struck he was set to represent Team BC at his first Nationals and was the top-ranked male national open gymnast in B.C.”
Van Harmelen died of a drug overdose, according to the online fundraiser, organized by Christine Kwan on behalf of Jennifer Van Harmelen. So far, close to $22,000 has been raised.
“Luke was in the process of turning everything around,” the post says. “He was engaged in therapy, he was working, and he had many wonderful things happening in his life. He was loved, and he knew he was loved. Sadly, he had a moment where the drive to use got the better of him, and this time the drugs that he used were not safe and they took his life.”
• RELATED STORY, from 2019: Surrey gymnasts win big in annual invitational.
The Carol Lenz Memorial meet is named in honour of Carol Ann Lenz, a former coach with Surrey Gymnastics Society who died in a car crash on the Pattullo Bridge back in 1983.
Carol Ann, her mother Eleanor said in 2019, started out in gymnastics at the age of six. Over the year, Eleanor said, Carol Ann progressed and was told she was “Olympic calibre” and would be have to go to Oregon to train.
Eleanor said that Carol Ann ultimately chose not to go that route and carried on with gymnastics until she was about 15 or 16 years old, and then helped coach at Surrey Gymnastics Society.
– with files from Lauren Collins