WAG First meet is done!

[catou]

So our first meet is over!

I'm pretty exhausted, as I had to coach two sessions in a row, without any break between the 2. I had 9 girls competing today in the cr3 argo de base category, but they separate them in two sessions. For 6 of them, it was a brand new thing to perform in front of judges and a crowd. The other 3 had had defi evaluations for those who know what I'm talking about.

So vault:
8 girls were able to do their handspring, 1 got a silver medal, and another one a 7th place. Pretty happy with that. (There were at least 3 of them we weren't even sure they would be able to complete it).

Bars:
A disaster for one of them (by disaster I mean a score of 4,7 on a maximum of 13...). We knew it would be her worst event, but we wanted her to get the experience, and she can actually perform much better than she did. She handled it really well, probably because of the fact we didn't tell her a score. And as a group, we had a total of 6 falls. I think we'll have to work on that . But seeing what the routines looked like in september, I'm really happy with the end result.

Beam:
Very happy, only 2 falls, one of them is described below.

Nothing specials for the floor, trampoline and tumbling... but I definitely have to get used to that scoring.

The good stuff:
- Nobody forgot their routine, only in warm-up so it's ok
- No tears and a pretty good attitude overall
- Everybody saluted the beginning of their routine (so the objective for the next meet: not forget to salute at the end of a routine!)
- Ribbons or medal for 7 of them (they gave medals to the 3 first positions and ribbons for positions 4th to 8th. There were 29 girls in the first session and 22 in the second one.

And now the funny stuff:
- Can I clap for another girl? Sure!!
- One of the girl did her dismount on beam, which is a roundoff, only to rebound and finish completly flat on her belly... Well, that was almost a stick
- The same girl told me she thought the judges would be the ones you see on tv... I don't thing these judges will come and judge a beam routine in which the hardest move is a handstand.
- And imagine your gymnast getting up, raising her hand walking toward the judges when the little girl showed her mark and her name (I don't know why I didn't think of that one in advance, I mean, what was she thinking the judges would do when she would show up at their table?!?)

 

[bogwoppit]

Not a bad day all in all. The bar routine is pretty tough compared to the other routine, it just takes a while to get it solid.


I found the tramp judging very difficult to understand, tumbling easier.

One of our Argos crawled off the floor on her hands and knees at the end of her routine instead of saluting. The coach was horrified. She never did that again.

 

[catou]

Tramp and tumbling were judged by tumbling and tramp judges... Not gym judges. I found the tumbling harder to understand, one of our gymnast got 7th place, but honestly, I don't think she was better than some of her teammates. She just don't get any rebound at the end of her roundoff...

We talked a bit with the tumbling judges, it looks like pointed toes and moving feet between each cartwheel is very costly.

 

[bogwoppit]

Yup, shuffles are never okay in tumbling. Harder in cartwheel than rondade flic flic isn't it?

When our girls first did cr instead of PQ we used gym judges for the T&T and the marks were fine, once we got real judges a few years back those scores tanked.

 

[catou]

Yep, tumbling is a different world, especially when the hardest thing you have ever taught is roundoff backhandspring!

At least now we know on what to put emphasis for the next competition, which is in only 6 weeks. With the facts that we probably won't be working on routines this week (we only have 2 training sessions left before christmas and one of them is the christmas party) and the christmas break... We will have only 3 weeks to prepare. And this time, we'll have 12 girls competing!