Meet One: New Orleans

The first meet of the season has come and gone, and so has a wonderful mini vacation to New Orleans. This meet went well for me and for all of my teammates, especially considering it was the first meet of the season. Everyone placed on at least one event, and everyone placed in all-around.

This was one of my best meets of both of my seasons in level nine. I scored a 9.125 on vault, an 8.8 on bars, an 8.6 on beam, and an 8.9 on floor! I was very pleased with how all of my routines went, and I had a lot of fun in the process!

Like all of my teammates, we killed it during awards! I placed third on vault, which is pretty good for me. I didn’t expect to place on anything else but floor, but I had a grandiose surprise! I won every other event, including all-around! I took home four gold medals and one bronze!

These are the medals I won!

A picture of me on the first place podium for all-around!

At this meet, the level sevens and the level nines were in the same session, which means that I got to be competing with my teammate who is a level seven. We are both the only one in our level, so we had a great time together! To pass the time in between events and keep our nerves under control, we had a massage train, we did yoga, and we watched videos on our coach’s iPad mini. I got to know her a lot better, and I know we will always be good friends.

We had a lot of time to explore New Orleans before and after the meet, and in my opinion, this was even more fun than winning my age group! My teammates and I had loads of fun away from the gym, too. We walked through the French Quarter, went to the St. Louis Cathedral, went to the Café du Monde, and had two, count TWO, team dinners!

These are the beignets that we ate at the Café Du Monde.

The level eights ended their competition late, and everyone was starving! We found a restaurant, the Sun Ray Grill, but on the way there there were lots of opportunities for pictures! We walked for about 30 feet, dropped our bags, and took a picture. We walked 30 feet, dropped our bags, and took another picture! We got so many cool pictures on the streets of New Orleans, I can’t post all of them.

My team with a jester statue in the convention center.
Just one of many pictures we took!

I stayed a day longer than my teammates. That day, my parents and I went back to the French Quarter, where I found an awesome store called Papier Plume. They sell a variety of fountain pens, glass pens, quills, inks, and other accessories for fine writing. I found it all very fascinating, and my parents decided to buy me a quill and glass pen. I have written a few things with them, and they are SO COOL!

My new quill and glass pen.

We also went to Mardi Gras World, where floats and props used in the Mardi Gras parades are stored. It was incredible how big some of them were, and I learned a lot about Mardi Gras.

I had lots of fun in New Orleans, and I can’t wait to make more great memories in New York next week!

One Week Away

This is the last week of workout before season! On Thursday, my team and I will be leaving to go to New Orleans, the site of our first meet of this season. However, we still have one week to make changes, fix details, and gain confidence!

The beginning of the season is always a stressful time. My head coach, Charity, is always anxious about how the first meet is going to go. She is also the state chair of USA Gymnastics Utah, so she really wants us to do well to uphold her reputation.

This puts a lot of pressure on us to do well. However, this year I am feeling like I can handle it better! First of all, I have learned a lot of handy tools in sport psych that will help me handle the pressure before and during the meet. Second, it is the beginning of the quarter instead of the end of one. In the past, our first meet has always been the week of the end of the quarter, which means I have lots of homework and tests to add to my stress level.

Finally, I am prepared. I have competed level nine one season already, and I am more prepared for this season than I was for the last one. However, there is one factor that is majorly different this season: I am the only person on the level nine team.

Last year, there were four people in level nine. This summer, two of those people moved to a rival gym, Olympus School of Gymnastics, and the other girl moved to Florida. Having support from teammates is really nice, and they add a lot to the overall experience of the meet.

Even so, I have a feeling this is going to be a great year! Throughout the workouts, stress, and nerves that this week will bring, I have New Orleans and a beignet from Café Du Monde to look forward to!

Picture of a beignet
Courtesy of Café Du Monde

Sport Psych

As you probably know already, gymnastics is not like most sports. Most sports are entirely physical, with almost no mental training involved. However, this is another place where gymnastics differs from other sports. There is as much mental training involved as there is physical training, and it is just as important!

My coach decided that we should start doing some sport psychology earlier this year, when almost everyone on my team was having problems with their attitudes. The head coach of Gymnastics Training Center of Utah (GTC) is going to college for sport psychology. Annie DiLuzio and her friend, Kristina Struthwolf, have been coming up every Wednesday for about four months to help us get in shape mentally. 

We started working on “big idea” things, such as breathing, relaxation, and concentration. We came up with cute words to help remind each other of things we have been working on while the coaches have no idea what we are talking about. 

More recently, we have been working a lot on imagery, and transferring it from our classes to the gym. This has also been working really well, and now we are starting to work on things that will help us at meets and good ways to prepare mentally for meets. 

We put all the handouts and worksheets that we get into a book. This is mine!

Sport psych has helped a lot with my gymnastics. However, it is really nice because everything we have learned easily transfers from the gym to school to everything else in life. A lot of the mental calming exercises that we do to help us keep our cool at meets work really well when you are worried for a big test. Even the simpler things work great - breathing, body language, and being in the present.

The thing that has helped me the most is wearing a rubber band on my wrist at all times. Whenever I think something negative, I take the rubber band off, restate the sentence to make it positive, and put the rubber band on the other wrist. I have used this at gym, but even more at school. It is amazing how many negative things you say and don’t realize until you really concentrate on it.

Sport psych has helped me a lot with my gymnastics and a lot with school. The classes are really fun, and the information that we learn is very useful. It is information that you can use to handle any situation, and I am excited to continue using sport psych to help better both my gymnastics and school careers!