Crazy things that have happened to you/your dd/your team during competitions

[gymnastbeth]

I did a vault before the judge saluted... This was in my very first meet, before I had contact lenses. So embarrassing! I couldn't even see if the judge was saluting me! At the following meets, I had my coach yell NOW! at me when the judge saluted. And then I got contacts.

 

[All Chalked Up]

My coach told me she went to a meet when she was 8 or 9, and on bars, she just kept on doing back hipcircles repeatedly, like 11 or 12 in a row. In the end, her coach had to stop her

 

[sara74]

DD (level 4) tripped/stumbled on her vault run today. She didn't fall down entirely, but you could see how thrown she was. She actually did vault on that run, but she looked like a frog while she was doing it. Both knees bent and flopped apart too. When she went back down to get ready for the second vault you could see both DD and her coach laughing out loud! She didn't trip on the second vault - she got a 9.05! Her first 9 of the season (second meet)!

Her coach told me that the judge was laughing as well and that she approached the coach to tell her that if it was an invitational meet where they give out 'special' awards, she would have given one to DD for her graceful run!

 

[Itstrueimagymnast]

Haha, this one time, a team mate of mine did a straddle roll right over the vault instead of a handspring, it was so funny!

 

[Granny Smith]

I wouldn't say it's the craziest thing, but last yr during dd's floor routine at a meet, a couple of kids were playing off to the side and unplugged the music, so dd started her routine with floor music, but after the first pass she had no more music. She just kept going and basically laughed through the rest of the routine. She still scored very well, something like 9.5 and placed 1st - so no harm, no foul.

Then 2 yrs ago at her States meet, during her 2nd vault which she did, but didn't land, her coach was called over to the judge's table and next thing I know dd is doing a 3rd vault. She balked her 1st vault and landed on her tush the 2nd vault and I had no idea why she was getting a 3rd vault - basically unheard of because she touched the table both times previously. Turns out judge's felt that her 2nd vault was distracted by a bunch of girls who were about to step on the vault runway while she was running down it, so the judges felt that the distraction affected her vault and let her go again. 3rd vault - she runs down the runway, trips going into the round off (Yurchenko vault) slams into the table, gets carried off and off to the hospital we go for x-rays on her foot. Thankfully, nothing was broken, just bruised and painful. In retrospect, she should of never taken that 3rd vault!

 

[Megley]

During a meet my dd's Level 4 year, one of the older girls vaulted and had so much power that she just landed on the mats and then slid right off onto the floor. She popped up from behind the mats and saluted. It was hilarious!

 

[gymnastbeth]

I wouldn't say it's the craziest thing, but last yr during dd's floor routine at a meet, a couple of kids were playing off to the side and unplugged the music, so dd started her routine with floor music, but after the first pass she had no more music. She just kept going and basically laughed through the rest of the routine. She still scored very well, something like 9.5 and placed 1st - so no harm, no foul.

Same thing happened to me! I almost liked it, because I don't exactly have the best musicality, so without the music, nobody could tell if I was going with the music! It was pretty funny, but I figured, hey, I don't want to have to stop and then start the routine over!

 

[kristilyn73]

DD was famous for things like that..

L5 - She once did 3 BHS's in her floor routine. The coaches had been training the girls on 3 BHS in a row all week and she just did it in her routine.

L6 - She was always falling on her Squat on, so Coaches taught her to do a Stoop circle (or Sole Circle). She did her low bar, squat on, fell back did a stoop circle.. and another, and another, and another..then fell. She just couldn't stop once she started!

L7 - 1st meet, 1st event, 1st Girl up on beam. Saluted, jumped up started routine... got about 10 seconds into it... stopped.. Looked at the judges and said "I started the wrong way, can I start over?" Got down and did it all again. She was so used to compulsories that she didn't think she could just do a pivot turn and continue.

 

[emacmommy]

Hmmmm, all this past weekend at a Halloween themed meet.

Two girls forgot costumes and wanted to participate in a costume show-off between the meet and awards. I had brought extra for just that purpose. One was a movie character costume left over from my daughter's spirit week at school the week before... a pink lady from Grease. For halloween my daughter is a goth halloween witch (homemade with huge fake eyelashes), but her teammate in my gymmie's borrowed Pink Lady costume won. Okay, ironic but not so strange.

The next girl to forget a costume was in the next session that I didn't stay for, but she forgot her chicken costume (yes, a full body crazy chicken costume). So they raided the bathroom and wrapped her up with toilet paper and she came out a mummy... AND WON!

Okay so this one is really a gymnasts related one. I had one little girl forget we were actually competing vault and ran up and did a straight jump... doh. Good thing we get two vault.

 

[MdGymMom01]

This didn't happen to me but to my dd's friend's cheer team. They were at a pretty big National competition and right in the middle of their cheer routine the lights and power went out. They were taught to keep going so they continued (they said they could still see on stage) but then the officials stopped the routine and evacuated the building. After about a 30 minute evacuation, they learned that someone had accidentally gone out an Emergency door that set off the alarm. When they returned into the building, the officials had the team go back up on stage and just mark the routine up until the dance portion where they had left off right before the alarm and then continue. The judges were able to score the first half of the routine before the alarm sounded. It was kind of weird to see the team up there and just stand there counting out 8 counts to themselves until the dance portion came on.

The ironic thing about the whole event was that the team that competed immediately before this team was Crimson Heat 5-Alarm. LOL

 

[gympanda]

I had a 10 year old L6 throw-up on the beam during warm-up at YMCA Nationals. It was a tight schedule and the meet director had drilled it into our heads that we had to stay on schedule, keep within our warm-up time, be ready, etc. We ended up with a 15 minute delay because we had to mop the mats and then dry them with paper towels. It was our first event and she went on to have a spectacular meet...go figure.

But, no one wanted to warm-up on that particular beam for the rest of the meet

 

[flipper's fan]

A very tiny very young gymnast arrived an hour early for the meet. She was with her dad. She went to the ladies' room and got stuck, locked herself in a stall and could not get out. I had to go in and slide under to her rescue. It turned out that she was an amazing gymnast, competitng for a " national training center" gym, and was able to do level 8 skills but too young to compete higher than level 4. In 2016, when she is on the olympic podium, I will silently giggle about the time I met her.

 

[Optionals United]

Thats soo cute flippers fan!

 

[emacmommy]

I have a very vivid memory of my first huge invitational... again decades ago. It was a hugely rewarding trip, but had some definite quirky moments. We flew to Reno (this was Gold Dust Invite when Neil & Patty Resnik ran it in the convention center). I was definitely young probably 9 yrs old, because we stayed in a room with a parent chaparone and back then when you travelled it was pretty much with only the coaches. The coach's room was attached by a separate door to the older girls rooms (back then Class 1 & pre-elites), this an important fact for later.

The night before the meet we were in bed trying to fall asleep, about 9:30, the parent in our room started to smell some smoke. She called down to the front desk and next thing we know we hear shouting.... "Hey Joe is that a fire!" Two floors directly beneath us the Mgr's Apt was on fire. So we gather up the important stuff, competition gear, leos, lucky stuffed animal, threw our jackets on over our PJ's, put our snow boots on (it was January) and headed to evacuate, ultimately ending up in the lobby of the motel next door.

Meanwhile the coach got the evacuation phone call and rushed into the older girls rooms (we are talking maybe 12 - 13 yr olds), well seems they had turned their heat on too high and it was really hot in there and they were in bed with just their skivies on, the coach was so embarrassed to have to rouse those girls out of bed (needless to say there was a PJ policy from then on). Those girls didn't get a chance to grab their competition stuff since they had spread out in the room and had to have a parent get it when all was clear in the morning.

So there we were in downtown Reno a bunch of young girls and a handful of adults walking two blocks to the nearest hotel that could put us up for the rest of the trip. There was plenty of jearing from passing cars, cat calls, etc. all in PJ's and snow gear. The funniest part... the motel was called "THE FIRESIDE INN"!!!

Wait there's more!!!! The new hotel was one of the high rises and I have a distinct memory of one of my friends chewing a big wad of purple bubble gum and then throwing it out the window. It hit a big greyhound bus. Of course we thought that was just hilarious!!! Well after the meet we went to visit the grandparent of that same friend who had a resort up in Lake Tahoe and on the drive up we passed a greyhound bus and it had a big wad of purple gum stuck to it. Of course we just rolled with laughter!!!

 

[Tuduri]

Sat

Last year at Westerns one of my daughter's teammates got to meet and take a picture with Shawn Johnson. Although we were from California, the teammate had scheduled to take the SAT the following day in Desmoines, Iowa where the competition was held. Just before the exam took place, the teammate was approached by a young lady who asked, "Do you remember me?" It was Shawn Johnson! She was taking the SAT, too.


Julio Garcia,
Jamy's dad

 

[MdGymMom01]

Last year at Westerns one of my daughter's teammates got to meet and take a picture with Shawn Johnson. Although we were from California, the teammate had scheduled to take the SAT the following day in Desmoines, Iowa where the competition was held. Just before the exam took place, the teammate was approached by a young lady who asked, "Do you remember me?" It was Shawn Johnson! She was taking the SAT, too.


Julio Garcia,
Jamy's dad

That is such a great story!!! And it shows you how down to earth Shawn is for being the one to approach the other girl and ask if she remembered her!! How cute is that!!!

 

[Tuduri]

Shawn

After my daughter began to warm up for her session that evening, I saw that Shawn was signing autographs and taking pictures. I asked her if she would be available later in the evening after my daughter's competition. She replied that she was leaving in a half hour but would be back that next morning. I said that we were leaving at 6:00 AM the following morning. I must have looked really downcast as I started to walk away. She called out, "I'm so sorry." And then she signed my daughter's picture in the Western's schedule and took a picture with me. She didn't want to charge me anything, but I gave her $10 for the charity she was sponsoring. She is a super nice young lady.

Now I kid my daughter by bragging that I got my picture taken with Shawn.

Julio Garcia,
Jamy's dad

 

[coachinkal]

When my DS competed level 3 pommel he was supposed to do pendulum swings, right leg over and back, left leg over dismount. Instead he did pedulum swings right leg over, left leg over dismount. It was the quickest pommel routine ever! The look of horror on his face was very memorable. Captured on video.

One of the boys I coach did a beautiful floor routine until the last element in the routine a handstand forward roll. He did three handstands before he got the roll.

I had a boy do a double back hip circle on highbar.

I had a boy turn the wrong way on floor and land up off the mat.