Sophia's Gymnastics Journey: 2013 Kids Celebrate Life Classic

I know, I know, it's been a while since I last updated the blog! Sophia has been super busy training for the rest of meet season and has not had any meets, until yesterday!! Yesterday was the 2013 Kids Celebrate Life Classic. This was the 2nd annual gymnastics meet in honor of a Massachusetts gymnastics judge, Karen Viafore, that passed away from breast cancer! Last years meet raised close to $30,000 that was donated to cancer and gymnastics charities! Don't know the amount raised this year, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was even more than last year!! This first picture of Sophia is her wearing the meet leotard! As much as she is not a fan of pink, the leo looked super good on her!

The first event of the day for Sophia was beam. Sophia performed a beautiful beam routine (a few small balance checks) and scored a 9.350. She received a 3rd place medal for the intermediate age group. Please enjoy her routine here!

Next up, floor! Sophia performed a very nice looking floor routine and scored a 9.175 for a 1st place medal. I, personally, think she deserved a higher score because I didn't see any major flaws with the routine. She did take a few small steps with landing the back tuck, but nothing super major! Of course, she was feeling down because she felt her score was low! So I had to give her the pep talk about how she is a great gymnast and she needs to use what she considers a mistake to learn and grow from for the future! And I reminded her that she is my favorite gymnast!! This cheered her up!! Here is her floor routine - I apologize about the woman that blocks a small part of it!

The 3rd event was vault! I am always amazed when I watch Sophia vault! For being such a little peanut, she has so much power when she vaults! She hits the springboard with so much strength!! She did 2 awesome vaults that I did not record (because the vault table was about 5 feet from the bottom row of bleachers and that meant there would be many people's heads on film, plus the whole thing just moves so fast)! Her vault score for the meet was a 9.175 and 1st place for her age group!

The final event of the meet was bars! Her warm up on the low bar looked amazing! Then she moved onto doing the whole routine (still in warm up mode) and my heart stopped and I almost ran down to the floor! She was doing her tap swing on the high bar and when she did her back swing, she lost her grip on the bar and fell - FACE FIRST down to the mat! FROM THE HIGH BAR!! Holy crap, I have never been so terrified! Fortunately, her coach Ivan darted in and caught her (with one arm) as she got close to the mat! She was crying and I thought she was hurt! Coach Tara took her off to the side and made sure she was okay, hugged her and made her smile and laugh!! She was not hurt, just very scared! Her teammates (those wonderful girls) made her smile and laugh with their silliness and all was better! I am very grateful to the parents sitting with me, because they helped keep me calm while this was going on!! When it was her turn to perform the bar routine for the judges, Sophia got up there and did an amazing routine! She scored a 9.075 and a 3rd place medal! Here is Sophia's bar routine!

Sophia was awarded the 2nd place trophy for the intermediate age group with an all-around score of 36.775! This is her highest meet score so far and I predict even more greatness as the season progresses!! I am so proud of her for so many reasons!!!

The Elite level 6 team all around score for the meet was 110.275 and they took home the 2nd place banner! The girls had a great meet and I am super proud of all of them!

The next meet is the Brestyan's Invitational on January 18th! As always, thank you for checking in on Sophia!!

And here a few pictures from the meet!!