Gymnastics Meet #2

Our daughter has only been taking gymnastics regularly for about a year and a half.  As I mentioned in a previous post, she was in a beginner class last year where they did not even take the time to consider advancing her to the next level.  Then after her first trial class at a different gym, they asked if we would consider putting her on a team.  Do what?

We agreed as long as she could start on the team that only travels locally once a month for meets instead of across the state and beyond several weekends each month.  There are three main categories for these meets:  bronze, silver, and gold.  We assumed she would start at the bronze category which is where almost every gymnast starts for his/her first year of competitive gymnastics even after many years of regular gymnastics lessons.  Instead, our daughter's team (most likely upon the insistence of our strong-willed, very driven daughter) decided to start at the silver category.  Within each category, there are four levels:  novice, intermediate, advanced, and elite.  All the girls on her silver team except one who had competed before competed at their first meet as "silver-novice". Our daughter won every event except beam and all-around, so the league coordinators would not let her stay at the novice level.  We thought they would move her to intermediate which we assumed would require more difficult stunts for the scoring.  Instead, they moved her all the way up to advanced.

She is just now learning to do a round-off back handspring (see video of her practicing below), but at the next meeting she would be competing against girls with years of experience who could do aerials, back tucks, and multiple back handsprings in one run.

The second meet was further away at the home gym of her team's toughest competition.  Nana and Pops attended the lengthy meet while I sat pathetically in quarantine with strep throat at home waiting for texts and videos my husband would send me after each event so I would "watch replays" remotely.

She scored 9.15 on the bars, only 0.1 point lower than she scored at the last meet in the novice level winning 2nd place!   Here is a brief snippet from her bars routine:

 

She improved her vault score from last time achieving an 8.95, but even that score was not impressive enough against the tougher competition to place.  For the floor routine, her coaches encouraged her to stay with the easier program which she had mastered well, but then she began to cry.  That strong-willed child was determined to do a standing back handspring and a round-off back handspring at this meet even though she still needed more time to refine them.  As I learned later, her score is not impacted by the difficulty of her tumbling runs as I had assumed but merely by how well she performs them, so she could have scored higher doing easier moves.  Even though her back handsprings were not at competition mastery yet, she still improved her score by 0.15 from the last meet where she had only done cartwheels.  I was so proud of her.

Her last event was the beam, the one event that did not go well at all at the last time as it is her most feared event.   By then, she was tired and intimidated and fell once during the routine and busted during the dismount.  She was extremely upset while we were just thankful she was not seriously injured during her falls.  Just as brokenness is a prerequisite to being filled in the spiritual sense, I encouraged her by assuring her that her fall all at this meet will help her become a stronger gymnast in the long run.  And we celebrated the fact that she achieved her back handspring goals on the floor routine (even if that was not her coach's goal).

She's clinging to Philippians 4:13 and now contemplating the truth that He who is in us is greater than He who is in this world.  She can overcome her fear of the beam through the power of God at work in her.