Z's first official optional meet is this weekend. We are travelling out of state and she gets to miss a day of school since she competes on Friday. I'm not worried since she is a straight-A student and gets all her homework done ahead of time.
The past couple of months (since States) have been a little strange. Our team has grown tremendously due to the closing of another local team. As a result, we have now been carpooling a couple of nights a week and I don't get to watch Z practice as often as I used to. That means there are times when I come to watch and she is doing skills that I didn't know that she could do!
Last week we had an in-house meet with a judge to allow the girls who have never competed optionals a chance to see what it is like. The judge who came was the bars judge at the Level 5 State meet in November, plus we have seen her at other meets. The benefit to having a coach who is also a judge is the connections to bring someone like this to the gym for us. The nice thing about this being an in-house meet was the judge gave a lot of feedback following each event. The girls were not given their score cards until after the judge left, but Z did really well.
The meet was held as an official meet would be. The girls wore their competition leos and warm ups. We started on vault, as we decided to do the traditional Olympic rotation--it also made it easier since there was still practice for the compulsory girls and recreation classes going on. Z has been fairly consistent on vault and this proved no different. The Level 6 vault is the same as the Level 5 vault, so nothing had changed. She scored a 9.35.
On bars, the routines are all different. Each girl doing her own routine with some similar skills. This was the first time that I had seen Z's full routine. To say I was impressed that she is now doing a kip, cast to handstand is an understatement. Her routine was clean and she scored a 9.40.
Beam was next. I was nervous about beam because this has always been her weakest event. Although she has been working on her back handspring, her coach has her doing a cartwheel instead. She is more consistent and normally doesn't fall. Her routine is cute and she smiled a lot. She scored a 9.10
Finally we had floor. This has normally been a strong event for Z. Her routine is great, although to me there are some slow spots. But she loves her music and has been working hard on this. Her coach did the choreography over a couple of weeks of privates, but hers was one of the first one finished. As such, she has had more time to perfect her routine. And, it showed. She was given a 9.60 on floor.
Her all-around score was a 37.45. This is the highest she has scored at any meet. Although she seems to think it isn't as important since the meet was at home, I did remind her that this was a "real" judge who was watching and giving the scores. The judge told her that her choreography is good, and that she is great with the emotion and smiling. She does need to work on her toe point and her split leaps, but she is doing well.
After practice was over, the other girls (compulsory team) were coming off the floor and as Z gave me her score card they were saying that "Z won." Apparently she had the highest all around score of the Level 6 girls. Although she will never compete directly against them since they are all at least 3 years older, it was still nice to see.
Fingers crossed that she keeps her momentum and does well on Friday. :)
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