First Meet Was Awesome

So Midget had her first meet of the season on Saturday. It was hosted at our gym and was considered a 'fun' meet. But regardless we were a little stressed about it. Well, when I say 'we' I mean my wife and I. We had family visiting to watch and wanted her to do so well, and apparently the practices leading up to it were full of struggles.

We really didn't need to worry.

The big things for me that stood out.

Beam - Her mount and the leg swing to push up position were as good as she has ever done them. If you look at last years videos you will see her swing up on her leg and then scoot over onto her rear end, this time she got the swing all the way over and sat perfectly centered, no shifting!! I am not sure if she needed the spot on the handstand or not. It looked good but her coach was right there so maybe I just couldn't tell. I cannot believe she fell on the turn! She never does that. Ah well she handled it great though. Pretty dismount

Floor - Her lines were beautiful. The only things I noticed were some shuffling feet, other than that she nailed it and the 9.3 was the best score she has ever gotten on anything. The whole gym erupted when the score went up, and the grin on her face was so awesome.

Vault - During warm ups she looked like a running frog, legs all over the place, and then she kept hitting the middle of the spring board. Her 1st warm up vault was a crash into the mat. 2nd was pretty good, 3rd I think her head hit the mat edge and caused her to roll over. But then during the real one (after I got the camera focused at the last second) she did awesome, the frog was gone, she hit the sweet spot on the board and she made that nice roll. For some reason they only did 1 vault though but she did great.

Bars - Apparently the Midget told her coach she did not need to stand on any mats to do her mount. LOL Anyway she obviously got it but good lord it hurt my abs watching her holding herself up there before she got pulled over. With the mat she just goes right up and over. Back hip circle was beautiful I thought. Mill circle is still blech, she is so close though. She really nailed the swing part of the dismount and just the one step. Her progression on bars from last year to this year is really the most obvious. It makes sense though as it is her favorite event.

I thought she did great, and the judges are a few of the same ones we see throughout the year so just because it was 'fun' I feel that they were judged well. Her coach said she asked them to score leniently, but not sure that applies to ours. The girl was on!

The one off the wall comment that came out of it was when the Midget watched the level 4s go and she turned to me after a few (from our gym and the others) got spots on their BHS and said "I can do that whole routine, if I can get the spot for the handspring, I want to be level 4." Not sure what to do about that.

All in all it was a great first meet and a great time. I expect we will have a very good year.

I intend to add the video shortly. Have to get the embed from home.