State Gymnastics Meet 2015

Our daughter hasn't had the best year for gymnastics.  We left the gymnastics studio we loved for it's Christian staff and ministry mindedness when we moved, and I wrestled for months over which gym to send her to next, for she wanted to compete, but we did not want to move up to the full USAG competitive schedule.  AAU had been the ideal league as it is competitive but tailored more for multi-sport athletes requiring only 9 hours per week of gym time with fewer and less expensive meets each year.  But the only gym nearby offering AAU was not impressive at all, so we sent her to a gym about 4 miles further (though closer to school) to try out the Xcel Program USAG offers.  It's still a lot of hours in the gym but doesn't have quite the rigor of full scale USAG.

We did not like the way the owners ran the gym and grew frustrated when she kept injuring herself. She would be out for over a month for an injury, miss a meet, and we still had to pay gym and meet fees as if she was still attending. We lost over $2000 due to injuries this year.  She never really got back to full strength for any of the meets, so she was disappointed with her placements, but her competition in this program was much tougher. Nevertheless, she rose up to be a leading member of her team by the end of the year despite only making about 65% of the practices due to injury.

The meet day started only about 2 hours after I normally go to bed, so with only four hours of sleep, I felt horrible all day.  I just can't pull all-nighters like I did too often back in the day.  Thankfully, my husband drove, and my parents generously agreed to take our son so he didn't have to drive two extra hours and then sit through a four hour meet on hard bleachers just to watch his sister perform for two minutes for all her events combined.

We were delighted to see some of our favorite church friends there who we don't get to see nearly as often as we wish.  Their daughter was competing for another gym in a different age group. Their daughters and our daughter have so much fun together.  If only we all lived closer.

Family seating was up in the balcony with railing blocking our view and people standing all around and in front of us since there wasn't enough seating.  So we did not get the best photos, but  I still enjoyed watching our little girl perform.

She started this meet on the beam.   She won 1st place at the AAU meet in beam last year after a season of falls and beam battles, so we weren't sure how it would go.  She got off to a great start with a 9.225 score on the beam.  She has scored better, but she had also added in more difficult elements at this meet.  She took home the 4th place medal for the beam.   I think her form is just lovely!

The floor event has never been best or a worst for her.  She had to take out some of the back handsprings during her last meets due to a knee injury but put them back in for the state meet.  I don't understand how the scoring works at these meets, for I thought this performance was her best yet.  Her score, however, was one of her worst at 8.925.  She did not place.  While I can't tell what her score will be while she is competing, I can tell as soon as she comes off the mat by the look on her coach's face.  She's learned a lot of new floor skills lately, so I'm sure her next routine will be very exiting.  Tucks, double back handsprings, aerials, and front handsprings are all in her tool kit now.


We didn't get any decent pics of her on the uneven bars since she was so far away from us and she spun so fast, but her routine was impressive with split spins and a high dismount.  She scored 9.275 on the bars, her 2nd highest bar score ever, and took home a 3rd place state medal for bars.

Her coach thought she might take 1st place in the vault as that was her best event, and she won 1st place at the state meet last year.  But something went wrong during both runs, so she scored a very disappointing 8.6 on the vault.  Her coach says she's got to stop predicting wins for these girls as it must put more pressure on them. I think her predictions resulted in unexpected bloopers for several others on the team as well.

Her beam and bar scores were high enough to offset the other disappointing scores, so she managed to finish 7th overall, and much to her excitement, she qualified for the regional competition.  I'm not sure her team will be going as it tends to be cost prohibitive for most athletes such that only those who think they have a chance of advancing to nationals typically go.  Yet, our daughter is begging.  It isn't in the budget, so if it's at a decent location, maybe we will call it our vacation for the year.

In the picture at the lower right, she is looking for me with her eyes crying out, "PLEASE take me to regionals.  I want to go more than you know!"

After any big performance, we like to take our kids out to eat to celebrate.  Her tradition has been to request Dairy Queen, so we celebrated with grilled sandwiches and blizzards. 

I was tempted not to post these pics since I got up too early to bother with my hair & make-up, but this blog is not a facade. It's our reality, and I look this awful more times than not. :-)

The day before the meet we talked about motives. Is she competing for selfish reasons or out of gratitude and love for God?  At this gym there is no mention of Christ, so she had begun to lose that focus, but after our talk, she did some thinking and realized that nothing we do has any meaning if we do it for ourselves.  When I asked her what is in the middle of the word, "Sin" she said, "I is in the middle because sin is rooted in selfishness."  It was a good talk and I think her heart got the message, but then I said, "When we act out of love for others, not for ourselves, any good we may receive in return is merely icing on the cake." And my dear daughter replied, "But the icing is my favorite part!' ‪#‎TeacherFail‬