WAG First Meet Done

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Mixed bag. Bronze and Silver went together in the morning. I was stunned how well they did. 13 girls and all but one hot medals. We had a 1st place vault, 3rd place AA, a 9.7! Lots of great stuff.

Gold was a disaster. We came away with a 5th place bars and an 8th place floor, but all the girls were at the very bottom in their age groups.

Honestly we don't vault much, but they just fling themselves over - all archy and bent. No scores in the 8s.

Bars was a mixed bag. A few falls on dumb things like back hip circles.

Beam was a total disaster. We had 2 routines in the 5s. Three falls - not completing any of their SV skills. Loads of tears.

Floor was really good, but I thouht they were under scored.

It was really hard watching my girls who work around 5 hours a week go up against girls who obviously train at least double that amount with ex-Romanian gymnast coaches.

It was rough. I have one girl who swears she is quitting and never wants to do gymnastics again.

I'm really not sure how to fix these girls. It's going to he s bumpy road.

As for their unitards, it was a non issue. They looked fine and I had a few coaches and judges say how much they liked them. Go figure.
 
My dd had her first meet 2 weeks ago and fnished bottom in her age group for her level on vault ( but 18/40 if you added all the gymnasts together from different age groups who were on the same level), the scoring was very close between them between o.o5 and 1.0 between a group of around 9 girls, dd came near bottom on tumble but it wasn't pretty so not to suprised. I didn't enjoy the experience due to the gym itself that we compete in, we had to wait an hour outside in the rain and they only let one level in at the time (due to space in the gym) and when you got in to watch it was very small and the seating was horrible - school benches and school chairs.

My dd enjoyed it and didn't care much about the medals, I thought they did very well considering this was their first meet competitively.
 
Happy to hear your level bronzes and silvers did well! But I'm sorry the golds didn't have that good time. Was it their first competition ever? Have you thought about the possibility to move them down a level? Maybe you didn't place them in a right level in the first place and level gold is just too difficult for them? Or did they just freeze in the competition and did well at practice? If it's not possible to move them down would it be possible to add one additional day for golds only? Or is it against the gym's policy?
 
Very first meet ever. I believe they belong gold. They need to get better form. Everytime I tell them about bent legs, flexed feet, bent arms, piked body, etc...now they know.

Meet 1. Learning experience.

My best beam worker fell on her bwo, didn't land a foot so she lost the required skill in addition to the fall, then forgot to do her full turn, missed her jump combination, and fell on her handstand - again not even landing one foot. Normally she is spot on.
 
Was it one particular thing on beam? Falls on particular elements? Our L8 team that competed yesterday also just had a terrible day on beam with a lot of low scores. For them it was falls, many on acro series, but on practically every other element too (except I don't think anyone fell on a dismount). Some girls had multiple falls. My DD, who was one of the only ones to stay on but did so by going small on many things, said the beam was really slippery.
 
My best beam worker fell on her bwo, didn't land a foot so she lost the required skill in addition to the fall, then forgot to do her full turn, missed her jump combination, and fell on her handstand - again not even landing one foot. Normally she is spot on.

This is where you take time at the beginning of practice and talk about things like start value and how much a fall costs...

Once the BWO was missed, the acro SR was lost (so the HS was a "wasted" skill anyways - at Gold, it doesn't matter unless they have 2 acro)... so the SV was down to 9.5 AND there was 0.5 for the fall.
Leaving out the Full Turn was another 0.5 SR... so the SV is down to 9.0. Missing the jump combination is another 0.5 SR... so the SV is down to 8.5. The fall on the HS costs 0.5 for the fall. That means that Best Case Scenario: 8.5 SV with 1.0 in fall deductions = 7.5 MAX score before any of the "Real" deductions.

It will get better. Everyone falls... it happens- even to Elites. Good luck helping your girls through this.
 
They do understand about the SR. I will definitely sit with them to go over it again. It's easy to see how your score is effected when you fall. It's harder to explain on floor when their tumbling was really good and they hit everything. The other teams were so much more polished that our scores were really low. The highest we did on floor was an 8.85 and she took 8th place. Other girls did the best floor routines they've ever done and scored in the high 7s.

This probably wasn't the best meet for us to do four our first one (at least at the Gold level). Then again, it's a learning experience. They have to work harder and I have to find more drills to help them.

I don't know what to do about vault. We need a new springboard. I've been having them use a minitramp because I don't really have an option. That said, it wasn't the board that caused them problems, but their form.

Drills for front handspring vaults PLEASE!

I also need to change the entire structure of our practices. We have 20 girls on the team (Bronze, Silver, and Gold) and two coaches. I need to figure out how to give everyone the attention they need.
 
Sorry you had a rough meet. Our levels 8s have had a couple not stellar ones so far I hear. And it's all relative too, right?! DDs beam routine scored TERRIBLY, but her goal was to hit the BHS and she did :) small victories! It sounds like you're doing a good job praising the positives while using the rough spots as an opportunity to learn and improve. Good luck!!!!
 
Sorry you had a rough meet. Our levels 8s have had a couple not stellar ones so far I hear. And it's all relative too, right?! DDs beam routine scored TERRIBLY, but her goal was to hit the BHS and she did :) small victories! It sounds like you're doing a good job praising the positives while using the rough spots as an opportunity to learn and improve. Good luck!!!!
She's not an 8 by the way! I was just talking about what I heard the parents of the older kids say...hopefully in a couple more years!
 
Congrats on the Silver and Bronze girls!

The Gold kids......I can totally see your problem. Part of it is probably that, even though the kids have the skills for Gold, they are likely competing against kids that have competed for several years.

I have a new athlete that just started gymnastics a little over a year ago (October 2013). She is already, skill level, almost right there with my two XS that have been competing for three years! I put her in Level 3 and while her skills are awesome (really, they are amazing!) learning the routines has been the most difficult part for her. Just understanding that when you put an arm up it can look like this, or it can look like that, and one is obviously better than the other.

Do you think they would rather do Silver and work on form or do you think they'd want to stay the course on Gold and improve what they've got now?
 
So glad that your bronze and silver girls did well. I am no coach, but I will say that my DD would fall apart on beam if she made an error. She is lovely on beam and is capable of and has scored big scores (9.7ish) but would freak and make more mistakes once she made one. Her coach talked to her a lot about what each error costs and did "out loud" scoring during her routine. She discovered that even WITH a mistake or a fall she can STILL get a good score. This really helped her mentally and now she is really the kid that will work to save a beam routine come heck or high water. LOL. As a parent I also have found that just reminding DD that this is "just" a meet- just a snippet of time that has no measure on who she is as a person, her value as a gymnast etc. And there is always another one to try again! Everyone has great meets and everyone has horrible meets. That's life. :) Live, learn, move on and have fun. ;)
 
I don't think any of them would want to move down and I don't really think they should. This was a particularly competitive meet. Probably not the best for our first time out.
 
I also need to change the entire structure of our practices. We have 20 girls on the team (Bronze, Silver, and Gold) and two coaches. I need to figure out how to give everyone the attention they need.

Wow, that's a lot of girls and three levels and just two coaches! If you cannot have any more coaches you have to start to teach the girls how to "coach" each others, for example I'd make them correct each others form (knees, toes etc easy-to-notice-stuff). For example, I would pair them during beam and then make them show to their partner 5 perfect leaps and the partner is allowed to be very strict and only count good ones. I would write a list of what they have to do like this:

Leaps 5 + 5 + 1
Handstands 5 + 5 + 1 etc.....

The numbers mean: 5 leaps on their own, 5 leaps shown to the partner and 1 leap shown to the coach. Then when they come to you and show it you can give them as many more as you think they need. If they do it well you can say fine and they move on to the next skill.

If I had a group like that I would structure a 2,5 hour practice like this:

15 minutes: warm up on floor, different every day. One day it's dance focused (leaps, jumps, turns, kicks, flexiblity) and other day it's about basic tumbling (handstands, cartwheels, rolls, round offs). I would focus on stuff they have in their routines but also lots of handstands, cartwheels and round off from kneeling position, handstand hops and stuff.

15 minutes of group conditioning on floor, hollow and arch holds, rocks, handstand holds, v-ups, push ups etc.

then I would split them into 3 different groups. One group is conditioning group, one is on bars and one is on vault. That way you can have just 6-7 girls in each group so much more attention for everyone on bars and vault. 20 minutes rotations. The conditioning group is given a sheet they have to complete. They work on pairs and the partner HAS TO count the repetitions and they are not allowed to let the partner cheat. Make sure you don't pair the best buddies! The partner also supervises the form.

Well now we still have one hour to go. I would now split them into 2 different groups. One group is on beam and the other one is on floor. 10 girls to one coach. Not ideal but can be done. 25 minutes on both events. If you have to use the whole floor area to routines, I would build stations everywhere else (beam mats work wine, blocks, wedges, spring boards, soft resi mats) That way you can have one working on routine and others doing the stations. If you have a pit and/or tumble track that's awesome and all the tumbling drills can be done outside of the floor when routines are worked.

Then the last 10 minutes of stretching
 
I really like this. We are going to try it tomorrow night. We will have a bit of an abbreviated practice though, we need to debrief from the meet. That will be fun.
 
Sometimes I think too that a team just has one of those days. That was certainly the case for our L8s yesterday. All of them are very experienced competitors by this time, and some of them are competing the same routines they did last year, but it was one of those things where the falling seemed to become contagious. Girls who usually stick just fell apart up there; when they weren't falling, they were struggling with major balance checks. Really, on the entire team there was only one girl who did a routine up to her potential/what she regularly does in practice! But I'm sure they will make up for it at a future meet. :)

(By the way, I've seen the same thing happen to a pommel horse rotation -- in both directions, almost everyone rocking it or most of them just having awful routines.)
 
Yes, I'm sure it could be that, but in general they just weren't as polished as the other teams. How can they be? They have been a team since June and this was their first ever competition. We will do better in the future.
 
I also need to change the entire structure of our practices. We have 20 girls on the team (Bronze, Silver, and Gold) and two coaches. I need to figure out how to give everyone the attention they need.
Do they all practice at the same time?
 
Not always. We have practice three nights a week. The girls are required to come to two practices a week and then we have an optional practice Saturday morning. Our gym is really different to other gyms. It is very non-competitive. It has taken me four years to get our GO to even allow a team and that's only because I found the Xcel program. He hates the JO program. Our gym is small (7000 sq ft) and we have to share practice time with a large parkour class on Wednesday's, and skills and drills classes on the other days. I can't wait for summer when everyone will leave me alone with my team!
 

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