State Gymnastics

Saturday April 30th was Nia's state gymnastics meet.  Monte took the boys to the farm on Friday evening to stay with my Dad (my Mom was out of town)  We got up about 7:00 Saturday morning and were on our way to the meet (2 1/2 hours away) at 7:30.  We stopped on the way for a good breakfast since the meet was from 11:00 - 1:00.  So Nia wouldn't get too hungry and everything was great.  One of Nia's teammates was competing at 8:00 am that morning and we got a call that she had got 1st on one of her events and 3rd overall, which was a personal best for her and we were really excited for her.

We got to the meet and Nia started warming up and then it started.  Her first event was vault and on her 1st vault she didn't even do her handstand before she kind of wobbled and had to start over.  So that was one chance out the window.  She did well on her second vault 9.6, which is a pretty good score for her.  Then she was onto bars where her practices went really well, then on her dismount her hand slipped off the bar and she landed and put her hands down so she didn't fall, which is a .5 deduction. 8.9.  So I was thinking, okay, this in not going so well, but she has her best two events coming up and she can bring her score up with those.  On beam she did a flawless routine (in my eyes anyway) and she scored a 9.55. What???  She has never scored lower than a 9.7 on the beam since her first meet back in December.  I was getting mad, but decided to just simmer down and she would pull it out on floor.  She was the very last person to compete on floor, which is always the last event so there were people getting up and talking and leaving to get a seat in the auditorium for the awards ceremony.  I was about to scream at them all for being so loud and distracting, but I thought that would probably been even more distracting so I controlled myself. (It wasn't easy)  She started her floor routine and I looked away for one second and thought I had missed her little back bend she does in the first part, but the rest was awesome.  Then her score came up..... 9.1.  What??? I was so confused, again the lowest score she had ever received.  What is going on.  Then she comes over and says "I forgot my back bend"  Oh, I thought I had just missed it.  That counts for a missed skill and they can take up to 1 point  deduction.  So we went to the awards ceremony pretty numb.

Following are the pics.  She got 2nd on beam, 5th on floor, 7th on bars, 5th on vault and 7th overall.

I can't figure out how to rotate them so I guess you will have to tilt your head today :)

Nia was pretty disappointed with her outcomes, but I tried to tell her that it just wasn't her day and there will be more meets next season, and no matter what we will always be proud of her!  She got over it pretty fast. She was a gymnastics on Monday and now they are working on skills for Level 4 and she is pretty excited about getting to skip level 3.