Mollie Smith has won the first ever individual gold medal in a national level competition for Marriotts Gym Club. The duo of Mollie and Katie Bell produced the top performances of their young careers when they won gold in the National Club Grades final at

Mollie Smith has won the first ever individual gold medal in a national level competition for Marriotts Gym Club.

The duo of Mollie and Katie Bell produced the top performances of their young careers when they won gold in the National Club Grades final at Birmingham on Saturday.

They had qualified via the regional final a few weeks ago where they had finished second and third in the regional grade three competition.

The girls were competing both as members of the Eastern Region team and as individuals.

In the team competition, four gymnasts compete on each piece of apparatus with the top three scores counting toward the region's score.

The competition had a full complement of gymnasts with teams from each of the 10 regions of England, plus teams from Scotland and from Wales. There were 48 gymnasts taking part in total.

Because of the number of gymnasts, the competition was run in three rounds with the East team having to compete in the first round along with the teams from Scotland, London and Yorkshire.

The team put in an excellent performance to lead after this round, and also for Mollie to be in the lead overall, ahead of the gymnast who had beaten her previously in the regional final.

The East and Mollie still led the team and individual competition at the end of the second round of teams competing.

In the third round, there was stiff competition with teams from the South West and the South East regions showing signs of challenging and several individual gymnasts putting in some good performances.

But none were good enough and at the end of the competition, it was the team from the East who took the overall gold in the team event.

Katie finished 12th overall and put in a fine set of scores which all contributed to the team total, including overall second highest score on the floor.

It was Mollie who was triumphant in the individual competition and was the only gymnast to score over nine on all four pieces of apparatus.

Their coach Svetlana Lebiadzinskaya was delighted with their performance and proud of what her gymnasts had achieved.

At the same time as the girls were competing, members of the boys' squad were also competing in their equivalent competition in Newcastle.

In the intermediate two competition, Marriotts also had two gymnasts in the Eastern Region team.

They led for much of the competition but eventually had to settle for the silver medal behind the team from Wales.

Marriotts gymnast Andrew Henry took overall seventh and Jack Maydom 11th.

The boys are coached by high performance coach Mikhail Molyev.

Head coach Derek Trotter was absolutely delighted with the achievements of the club's gymnasts.

He said: "The gymnasts and coaches are getting rewards for their effort and dedication. The club is now well established at regional level and has a firm base for moving into elite level competition in the future.