Today was Championship Saturday. Riley's session was last BUT we were doing fundraisers so we had to be there with the first group at 8. Riley had to be at work from 9 - 11:30 AND we had to do our volunteer shift from 11 - 2. So yeah, we were there all day.
There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not Riley is ready to be done with gymnastics. She has choices between doing club, doing club and high school or just high school. Her options are a little weird because of not having a real high school team but she's also burnt out. But after last night's practice...she is leaning towards quitting completely.
So...first rotation was vault. She's always been a good vaulter but has been having some issues with how high the vault table is. She needs to get it to about a 6 in order to flip off of it which should help her make regionals in high school. She usually goes off at a 4. At state, she went off at a 2 which didn't give her time to set correctly and she got a yucky score. Anyway, she's back up to a 4, she vaulted beautifully and got a 9.15. That was enough for first among her teammates but not high enough to hold up for the whole meet. Bars was next. Her only issue on bars is she tends to pause before going to the next bar which is a .3 deduction. She paused and got a 9.15 . Next up was beam. She has yet to stay ON the beam for an entire routine for the whole season. Tonight she stayed on and got a 9.125 and tied with a teammate while her bestie got first (with a fall!!). They were killing it as a team. This was also the point that we saw a 9.5 flash on vault which was disappointing. She finished with floor. Here's where things got weird to be completely honest. She has gotten the skill back to do round off backhandspring back tucks but hasn't moved them to the competitive floor. So she skipped it. She did not get a deduction. She scored the same as the teammate mentioned above who absolutely lost her mind and told their coach to go demand a better score for her....that did not happen.
Anyway, on to awards (after our fundraising handstand contest). Somehow they ran out of medals so the gym was just throwing any kind of medal out that they could find. Weird but funny. Anyway, vault was first. Riley got third but was thrilled to make the podium. Next was bars. She tied for first!! Beam, she got second and floor she tied for second while her bestie won. All of her teammates ended up winning an event...but Riley won the whole darn thing. It was crazy. Their team also won first AND she raised $230 for the kids. We ended up going out to dinner after with some of her teammates. There was a LOT of laughter at that table.
