Matthew, tearing it up in the driveway.

Matthew dressed for Halloween

Maria on Halloween

Maggie and Molly going to homecoming.

Matthew, explaining it to Mrs. Clause

More Xmas photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mdisher/NovXmas2010WithThompsonClan#

Molly turned in her 4th straight 1st place all-around for her age group.  The competition was tough for this meet, especially in the 11 and 12 year old age groups.  Deveau’s of Indiana took first place for the team, with CGA a much closer than anticipated 2nd place.

We had a bit of a crisis, Molly left her competition leotard at home so she had to use her backup leo.  Good thing she had that with her.

Molly’s routines are below:

Bars:

Beam:

Floor:

In addition to Molly’s routines you’ll find a couple videos of Donna, Diana, and Lilly for last week here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/madisher#p/u

(Click the see-all link on the right)

Molly did well, notching her 3rd first place all around in a row.  Her individual places were 8th, 5th, and 2 second place.   Her teammates, Kendra, Andrea, and Kierstan had outstanding meets with really rocking scores.

The meet scores are posted here.

Molly’s routines at this meet are blow.

Bars:

Beam:

Floor:

&

Vault:

In the process she stumbled upon My Meet Scores.com.  Which is a site which compiles meet scores.  Not every meet is included, in fact the last two we’ve been to are not there.  The Gatlinburg meet doesn’t appear anywhere.

So far this year Molly has cracked the Top 100 (#78) at the time of writing this with a Level 6 Bar score of. 9.275

Her overview page is here, which lists her personal bests that they have:

The CGA Team page is here.

Which includes girls from our Gym who have broken into the top 100.

To say we are proud is an understatement.

It will be interesting to see how this changes in the upcoming weeks.  A number of CGA girls have had break out meets and we are proud of all the girls. 

Turned out with the snow that was probably a good thing.

For the individual events she was 2nd on Bars, Beam, Floor, and 8th in Vault but that was good enough to be first place all-around with a pretty good margin. 

She had a good meet.

Her routines are on youtube below (in high-def even).   I didn’t get her bar routine this time.

Floor:

Vault:

Beam:

Movies taken with my Cannon SX-10 Camera, so they aren’t the best, but they will do.

Bars:

Beam:

Floor:

She had met her personal goals for the season and there wasn’t any reason to continue the 4 day regimen and all the expenses that go with it so we let her ‘retire’.

At this level gymnastics isn’t the kind of thing you can take a considerable time off of and then go back to it, so we wanted to keep her in it, albeit at a less stressful level, a while longer just to be sure.

The Coaches agreed we needed to keep her in it. So she moved form the Level 5 Competition team to the Preparatory Optional Team. She can’t compete prep-opt this year because she already competed level 5, but she could still work out with the team two days a week.

Levels 3-6 all do the same routines, the same skills at the competitions. It’s very repetitive and somewhat boring but I understand it. It lays the foundation for future skills.

Molly was clearly bored to death of doing the same thing she did last year. With pre-opt she’s learning new skills and doing things she *thought* she’d be afraid to do when she was in level 5.

She’s now somewhat sad she retired, but understands she wouldn’t be doing the things she’s doing now if she hadn’t. She wants a floor routine, which involves us hiring a choreographer, and she thinks she wants to compete in the optionals next year.

This is good, I think.

3 years ago Molly started taking gymnastics for fun. Participation in a home school gymnastics class was all it took. She was ‘discovered’ and encouraged to try out for the ‘team’. Even though she’d only been taking gymnastics for a couple months and didn’t have the skills they saw something in her they liked.
Her first ever attempt at a round off back hand spring was at the Level 4 tryouts 3 years ago.

The rest is history. She made the team on heart and ability. The rest would come with training.

She worked her tail off and by the time meet season rolled around did very well. She finished very well. Exceptionally well for someone that didn’t have a couple years of experience, and she did well enough to get moved to level 5. Skill wise she was ready, emotionally, probably not.

CGA/Gymnastics transformed Molly. It brought her out of her shell and gave her a confidence she probably never would have gained any other way.
She met lots of friends and generally loved every minute of it. Her results at the end of her first year in level 5 were acceptable. Not great but not bad either. Towards the end we could tell that she really wasn’t giving it her all. She did at practice but during meets she was nervous and just going through the motions. She had thoughts of quitting. I think the season was tough for her, and on her, she didn’t score as well as she’d hoped. 10’s are very rare, heck, 9.5’s are very rare and I think she expected them every time.

We encouraged her and explained to her that she was ‘gifted’. She has ‘it’. It’s rare that kids get to find their knack and she had found hers. Many parents try to will their kids to be good at something; Baseball, Football, or Soccer. I’m not saying it can’t be done. Through hard work anything can be done, but it’s certainly comes easier for them when it’s their ‘thing’.

Gymnastics do come naturally for Molly. She generally doesn’t have to work as hard as other kids to obtain new skills. They just come.

This year started out well. The coaches decided she needed to repeat level 5. In hindsight I think that was a mistake. She may not have been ready emotionally, but she wasn’t ready for level 4 either. She may not have scored as well as the coaches wanted in level 5 but she was still in the top half of the team or better.

I think the boredom killed her passion. The stress that these little girls are placed under to compete and score well is immense. Some get it, others don’t. Those that do, well it’s not easy to cope with when your 8, 9 or 10 years old.
They work hard, 12+ hours a week (3 hours a day 4 times a week) conditioning and polishing their routines at the gym and that doesn’t include all the gymnastics she does around the house or open gym. Two years of doing the same thing is a long, long time.

Molly started the year with some personal goals in mind. Her vault in level 5 was the one thing that really held her back. Had those scores been a point higher she probably would have made level 6 and I wouldn’t be typing this.

But the fact is she did repeat level 5. (Repeating level 4 or 5 is not uncommon). She worked through the preparation season twice. Day in and day out doing the same thing, the same work outs, the same exercises and routines. I’m not knocking the coaches. They do what they can to keep it fun and exciting but it’s still not enough.
Her first meet this year went OK. She finished 7th in the overall which all things considered is good. But that’s not Molly’s style. She was used to podiums from level 4. She vaulted well, got robbed on Bars and floor. Had a huge routine on Beam and scored well even with a fall.

Her 7th place finish stressed her a bit. We could see she was getting her nervous ticks again’. The only time we’d ever seen those from her was during competition last year. She tweaks her neck, and raises her eyebrows. We can clearly tell when she’s stressed.

She had wanted to quit last year but we encouraged her to finish what she started. Persevere, get it done. It wasn’t time to quit just yet.

Last week we realized she had done that. She had done everything we had asked of her. If she wasn’t enjoying it anymore there really is no need to continue. We had given her permission to quit a couple weeks ago but she wasn’t ready. She didn’t want to let down the team or her coaches. “They are counting on my scores”, she said (and they do).

Last week was the breaking point, and she decided she was ready. One more meet, one more competition to get a good vault score, something she’d worked so hard on all year. We agreed she could quit after the Coaches Spectacular meet and she was very relieved.

Then came Friday and she turned up with a fever and the flu. It wasn’t fun for her. She was equally sick on Saturday and we decided she needed to stay home. She couldn’t compete, she didn’t have the energy.

Sunday morning she awoke somewhat refreshed and begged Claudine to take her to the meet. She had something to prove to herself. She needed to get a 9 on Vault. Then she was done.

She got an 8.800, which scored her 6th on Vault. Only two girls got 9’s and 9.200 was the top score. She finished 3rd overall for her age group and that was good enough. Mission accomplished.

Right about now she’s informing her coach that she’s done. She wants to continue doing the gymnastics things she likes and CGA has a class for that. Tumbling and Optional skills. Will she ever compete again? Who knows?. Maybe there will be a coaching change at CGA, maybe something will trigger her passion again. Then again maybe not. We’ll enjoy having her around much more often.

We are proud of Molly, she really is awesome.

It started yesterday with the Queen City Classic. CGA faired better than most as usual.

This is Molly’s 2nd year in Level 5. We’re expecting great things. She had a pretty good meet, finishing 7th overall out of 21 in her age bracket. She had a rough go at beam, got robbed on Bars, and floor. Not sure what the judges were looking for. Both of her routines were about as good as they get and would have scored better last year.

On the upside, she hit a personal high on vault.

I didn’t take as many photos as I usually do, but they are posted in the Google/Picasa Gallery. I did grab a few of Allison, our car pool partner.

Some other candids and actions shot of other gymnasts are included as well.

Ah the season finale took place yesterday in loverly Lima, Ohio.

The girls did well, and ended up with second place.  The judging was overly harsh at this competition for some reason, or so it seemed.

There is usually some variance in the scores from meet to meet, and certainly this one was no exception. 

We are so very proud of Molly.  This was the first meet that she wasn’t nervous.  She worked her butt off since the last meet and she was absolutely 100% ready.  We are so proud of her work ethic, and her attitude.  We know she gave a 100% at this meet.   She didn’t score real well, but that’s OK.  I think she got hosed on her floor and beam routing.  They were as good as I’ve seen her do, yet the scores weren’t there.  Molly wasn’t alone in this category.   A lot of girls simply didn’t get the scores they should have.  selavi

Photos that I took during the meet have been published in the Picasa Web Gallery.

They aren’t my ‘best work’, the lighting in that gym was probably the worst we’ve seen, and I had a setting on my camera enabled that shouldn’t have been.

-Enjoy 

From CGA Level 5 S…

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