This was the last regular meet of the season. Not only was it 2 1/2 hours away, it was on a Friday and we had to be there at 7:30am. That meant staying down near the venue--after all it takes time to do hair for competition and someone needed sleep. Our first task was to find somewhere that we could stay that wasn't going to charge an arm and a leg--we found one, it looked good online, so we booked her coach there too.
Z had practice until 7:00 the night before the meet and we drove down right after. Upon checking into the hotel, I immediately regretted our choice. When Z went into the bathroom, I noticed only one pillow, then heard, "um, mom, is this blood on the floor?" It was, and the bathtub was pink (either from cleaning blood or mildew, but in any event, EWWW), plus there were no towels. A call down to the front desk and they assured us they would find us a new room (even though they were sold out for the night--thank goodness I checked the coach in earlier). The new room wasn't much better, but it was a bed and we were able to sleep.
The meet was at the same venue that we had been at a few weeks earlier. The events were laid out a bit differently, but at least we were in a familiar place. For the first time this season, we were going to have vault as our first rotation. Although there were two flights (and two vaults), there seemed to be a delay in the meet starting. Turns out a vault was broken and two flights for vault essentially became one. Z had one of her best vaults of the season, scoring a 9.400. It was pretty funny because all of the girls on the team did well, scoring over a 9.000, but each score was progressively higher with Z being right in the middle of her team.
Bars was next. The warm-up looked good and Z has been fairly solid in practice. She got up and did what I thought was a beautiful routine. She scored a 9.175, but the coach said we had national judges who specialize in bars, so the scores were rough. In fact, Z was the only one on the team who scored a 9.000.
On to beam--I definitely noticed some wobbles and she wasn't as tight as she could have been, but she still scored a 9.000. Perfectly acceptable for me.
Floor was last--I love when they are on floor last. All of our girls do well on floor. This was no exception--she scored a 9.425, giving an all-around score of 37.000, her highest of the season.
This was a rough meet in that we had two teams from the Bay Area and one from Southern California, so there was definitely some stiff competition. Z still wound up getting four medals--5th on vault, 4th on bars and floor and 6th all around. Overall, she was very pleased with her performance.
Unfortunately, on Saturday night, she woke up sick--strep throat, which two girls on her team have had in the last month. She missed two days of school, but only one day of practice. Luckily we have until April 2nd before States, so time to recover.
