Floored

Floor: the event I most eagerly anticipated as a gymnast. I always hoped that it'd be our last rotation. It didn't matter if I'd done well on the other events or bombed them. With my love of dance and performing (oh, yeah, and tumbling), I could turn a good day into a great day. Sometimes, it sealed the deal: qualifying to States, making it to event finals at Nationals, giving us that League 3 victory! In the latter competition, my hair tie fell out during my first tumbling pass. Luckily, my hair was fairly short at the time. I also used to wear glasses with a really attractive athletic strap to keep them in place, and it helped with the hair. I pranced around like nothing had happened. And we were the champions.

If I accomplished anything that first season of coaching, it was acceptable leaps. Sure, most of them couldn't get their splits down. But I planned to work that dynamic flexibility for all it was worth. Kicks. Needle kicks. Kicks of all directions and creeds. Split jumps, on floor and tumble track. Leaps, leaps, leaps. And alas, it all came together: leaps that hit a full split.

::a divine light shines down::

While nobody particularly admires the compulsory floor and beam routines, the Level 5 floor routine really bothers me. Maybe it's the music choice. Or perhaps it's the silly prance steps. I mean, I'm all for prancing. But c'mon. Or maybe it was that, more than their beam routines, the girls had wide disparities in how the routine ought to be executed, and the re-teaching was more like an overhaul. It felt as if with all the time spent adjusting and figuring out the correct floor pattern and constantly trying to fix that inward half turn that confused them all, there was no time left to make the routine look, well, good. Polished.

At least Maya wasn't confused. In practice, she'd laze through her routine. But at the meet, she hit each pose crisply, attacked the tumbling, flew into the air for the back tuck.

For Jamie, tumbling came easily. As the warm-ups for floor wound down, I'd take her aside and guide her through the floor pattern, giving her points in the gym to look at during her routine. She remembered. Usually.

Unfortunately, Brittany's grace and lovely lines could not make up for her atrocious back extension roll nor the two slow back handsprings with bent legs. Those two massive flaws often plummeted her scores to the mid to low 8.0's.

Natalie, bless her soul, went for her floor routines with everything she had. Her legs were actually straight! Her chin thrown back, sometimes quite dramatically, her hands flicking to the music. Certainly, a girl after my own heart.

Kelsey nearly always turned in a clean routine with excellent tumbling. Kathryn and Kasey...not so much.

And then there was Tia, who broke her hand in the fall mid-back handspring. Though she's quite small, her back handsprings moved slowly, labored, and somedays she could barely do one, let alone two. As a result, her scores hovered in the 6.0's, sometimes a generous 7.0. By the end of the season, she had it back. At our final meet, she went through the routine in her standard mechanical way. Her leap pass was lovely. Her back walkover, not too shabby. She ran across the floor, did the two back handsprings, and the girls screamed with excitement. When the 8.0 went up, she started crying--from happiness.

And thus our first season came to a close.