This was really weird since we had four weeks between the last season meet and the State Championships. Obviously this allows lots of time for practice, but also allows for time to stress out. While I felt confident that Z would do well, she waffled back in forth between believing in herself and not. We did have a private lesson the Wednesday before the meet since she wanted to work on her layout for floor--she had told me two weeks earlier that she was going to do the layout at States, but then became insecure over it. The next day (Thursday), she came home from practice clearly upset. Apparently the girls had been "goofing off" and doing their floor routines to different music or sped up music. She was wanting a serious practice and was afraid that by goofing off and laughing, she might do the same thing at the meet. The coach promised, and delivered, a serious practice on Friday. We then had Saturday free because we didn't compete until Sunday.
Sunday was an interesting day--or at least the morning was. All four of Z's teammates were competing at 8:00am, but Z didn't compete until 5:00pm. So, we had plenty of time to get ready, do hair and drive the 2 1/2 hours to the meet. While we were waiting, I was able to watch Z's teammates scores. There were definitely some good points, but it looked like each of the girls had struggled on something. Since Z never asked, I didn't tell her and I told her coach the same thing.
We did something a little different with her hair, and while we were waiting to leave, she was complaining that it hurt. Part way down to the meet, we pulled over and I started to partially undo her hair, which helped. We also played a game and took her mind off things. We were able to make it work that her dad got to come watch as well, which I think helped keep her mind off things.
When we got to the meet location, we went in to change and finish her hair. As we were coming out of the bathroom, we saw the dad of one of her teammates. It turns out they decided to stay and watch and cheer on Z since she would be competing alone. It was really sweet, especially since this girl and Z were the only level 5 girls that competed last season. Two other rec coaches from the gym had also come to see what a girls meet was like--so Z had a little bit of a cheering section, in addition to me and her dad.
Just before the meet started, he coach let me know that Z would be starting on vault and was in the first rotation. This meant that she was doing the traditional rotation and would be done a bit earlier than everyone else. Since it was going to be a late night anyway, this made me happy. And I know Z was happy because she prefers to start on vault.
The vault was literally right in front of our seats. If I wanted to I could have reached out and touched Z as she walked by. Her warm up looked really good and I was impressed. I was more impressed with the fact that she stuck her first landing--she has never done that in competition before. Her second vault had a small little step, but she wound up scoring a 9.300.
Bars looked good during warm up. She did go over once on her cast to handstand, but I was more worried that Z might be watching the other girls in her rotation because they were almost all struggling. She was the last to go on bars and several of the girls either fell or made major mistakes in their routines. Luckily, it didn't seem to phase Z at all and she scored a 9.325.
Beam was next and her warm up looked pretty good. She has struggled a bit in the past and at the last meet the judges commented that her split leap and split jump needed work. She did work on them during her private and during her routine it showed. They were split nicely and fairly high. She still had some wobbles, but scored a 9.150.
Her last event was floor. She is normally strong on floor and I expected it to go well. The main question was whether she would do her layout or keep the tuck. She ended up doing the tuck--she said she wanted to make sure that she had a good landing--and scored a 9.450. This gave her an all-around score of 37.225, her highest of the season and her second highest overall.
During awards, she placed in every event. The funny thing was that she tied for everything except all-around. She was 7th on vault, 5th on bars, 6th on beam and 2nd on floor, with a fourth place finish in all-around, and only a tenth of a point away from second. Overall this was a great showing for her. She was competing against girls from the Bay Area and she placed higher than several who have beat her during the season. I'm very proud of her for all of her hard work and effort.
