Parents calling all optional moms and others- competition readiness?

DON'T LURK... Join The Discussion!

Members see FEWER ads

M

marathonmom

my daughter, just had her first level 8 meet. Prior to this she had some lower
leg issues and for several weeks, didn't tumble on the floor (just did the dance part of her routine) and tumbled on the tumble track.

There was a question as to if she would compete floor. On the monday before the Sat. meet, she did her routine including tumbling on the floor just fine. The coaches and my daughter decided to have her do the floor event at the meet.

Also... my daughter "got" her bar routine about 3 weeks before competition.

At the meet, she competed floor first and during her first tumbling run, landed on the back of her neck leaving her dazed and wobbly as she completed her routine. Her coach & I both commented that we were surprised she didn't fall over. She did a nice front handspring vault as she doesn't have her tsouk(sp?) yet. With bars she did not make her pirouette the first time, then did not make her squat on, then did not make her free hip or 2 giants, but then did the 2 giants. She finished up with beam. That routine she has had since late summer and she did great.

I'm wondering if she has not had the number of repetitions of the routines in practice that she needed to have in order to have a better chance of safety and success with floor and bars. Is the beginning of the season like this? are things learned and competed that close to a meet? I'd appreciate any thoughts/experience on this. Thanks!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
My daughter will have a mockmeet next weekend and I'm stressed.She is stressed too.She will be competing Level 9 and has passed all her individual skills a couple of month ago.Floor looked pretty good yesterday although I think that has only been the 2 nd full floorroutine she did so far(well she had a little boost on her doubleback but can do another pass if she doen't do that one).Vault is the same as last year.I think she will be fine.Has done her beam routine a few times but crashed on her series a couple of weeks ago and has not done it since.Bars is the one that really worries me.She has not connected her skills yet.Coach is convinced she will be doing it soon.I trust our coaches.Ofcourse it is not a guarantee she will be doing it.
It will depend on my daughter(and coaches) if she wants to really work hard to get her routines down.
Last year they competed a couple of Level 8 meets and the coaches told us if the meets don't go well they will have the girls drop back to Level 7.
USAG allows that up to a certain date.I think either end of Feb or beginning of March.
Last year at my daughter's mockmeet she competed as a Level 7 with 1 Level 8 floorpass and competed 1 Level 7 and 1 Level 8 vault.
Level 7 bars and beam.Which was not pretty.
She did have a successfull Level 8 season and qualified for Regionals.
I probaply wrote to much and I don't know if it makes any sense but i think they get more confident after a couple of meets and do fine.If not they can always drop back. I know it is hard to watch when they have a terrible time.
 
Thanks hunde2 for your input and good luck to your daughter at the mock meet and this season! I guess we'll see how things go. I'm not so concerned with the scores as the safety issue and my daughter having that confidence that comes when the routines are really "part of you".
 
Safety is the issue I have too.It is very scary to watch a fall.I would have been very sceptic of my daughter competing floor if she mostly just worked out on tumble track.
 
I'm pretty nervous about where my gymmie and her teammates are regarding getting ready for the season. 1st meet is 4 weeks away and they have a mock meet tomorrow. She's been practicing with either a badly jammed pinkie toe/broken toe(treatment is the same), so alot of her tumbling has been on tumble trak. Also, 1 coach who is supposed to be helping with the fx and beam doesn't come to all practices and when she's been showing up lately has been in a real bad mood and is changing things left and right. Last week she told my gymmie to put either a jump 3/4 or a tuck 1/2 in the beam routine---kid has never really done either. She finally did get the coach to work with her on the tuck1/2 at the next practice. Then she came home the other night and said the coach changed the order of her tumbling passes putting the front tumbling as the 1st pass and taking out her full for now(its gotten messed up because of the toe issue) and changing it to a 1/2. Of course, once she's got the full back, then they'll have to change it around again. These don't sound huge, but it has her coming out of tumbling passes in different directions than she's used to. Gosh knows what this fx will look like tomorrow. Thing is this coach has seen these girls alot and knows their strengths/weaknesses, but seems to wait til the last minute to make corrections.

As far as bars---she's good there, but has only done a couple of complete routines. Its a long routine(big change from L7) and she needs to figure out where to take a breath. Vault seems ok with more reps. She can stand the tuck tsuk up about 60-70% of the time. Seems our problem right now is an increase in our optional girls, but coaches being spread too thin and the plan for who would coach what not exactly coming together.

Marathonmom---I would have been concerned about your dd competing fx also and then continuing in the meet after that bad fall. I can certainly understand her being shaken for the rest of the meet. Sounds like what all our girls need are reps, reps reps to get confidence in the routines and correct the technique issues.
 
Repitions are really important, routines should become muscle memory at some point (IMO). But, it takes a while for that to happen. Unless your gymmie is doing a routine for the second year in a row the first few meets are going to be rocky.

My DD learned her floor routine in August. She is STILL Changing it around, and she has her judges mock meet on Friday. I bet we will have a couple more changes after that.

I am glad to hear that your DD wasnt hurt during the meet. I hope the next one goes better.
 

New Posts

DON'T LURK... Join The Discussion!

Members see FEWER ads

Gymnaverse :: Recent Activity

College Gym News

New Posts

Back