School Days 2006

The second meet of Caitlin’s 2006 gymastics season was “School Days” held last Saturday afternoon at Golden Gate Gymnastics in Concord, California.

This was Caitlin’s first event at GGG, and I thought they ran a great meet! In spite of the rather small gym, there was plenty of room for spectators and gymnasts. (It may have helped that we were in the final session, since one of the earlier attendees told me that the morning and afternoon sessions had many more gymnasts.) During the late session there were about 10-15 girls per event, so the competition floor wasn’t very crowded. I assume that the meet organizers would want to keep the earlier sessions maxed out. Thus the final session can run “light” and finish as quickly as possible, so the meet staff can start cleanup ASAP. Perhaps we should request the final session in the future?

Caitlin medaled in every event this weekend. She took second place on the uneven bars and fifth place on vault, beam and floor; however, between her very good score on bars and her consistent finishes in the other events, she managed to pull third place overall.

Caitlin had a beautiful beam routine, including what looked like a perfect cartwheel, but she managed to fall (jump?) off the beam in spite of landing exactly where/how she ought to. A fall is a 0.500 deduction, so her beam score would have been at least 9.450 (which would have put her in first place on beam). The cartwheel is her bête noir. If she can overcome this, I think she’ll be taking first place on the beam consistently.

Her floor and bar routines had some very minor flaws. She knows what the problems are, and she can probably correct them before the end of the season. If she does, I think she can pick up another 0.200 to 0.400 points pretty easily in both of these events.

Caitlin’s team took first place in their session, and although I haven’t seen the entire team’s scores I’m pretty sure that Caitlin had a hand in their victory. Way to go Caitlin and Pozsar’s Gymnastics!

After the awards ceremony we got the girls and coaches together for a couple of team pictures:

After the meet, the team and their families all went to Fuddrucker’s for dinner. It was great to be able to talk to all the team parents in a non-gym atmosphere. I hope we can make this post-meet get together a team tradition!