This was the forth meet for eNeRGy girls team this year. This event was hosted on home turf. Natalie bested her overall performance from the previous week. Scoring on Vault: 8.425 (6th), Bars: 9.275 (4th), Beam: 9.275 (2nd), Floor: 9.525 (3rd), and All Around: 36.500 (3rd). The Prep Op Gold team placed 2nd to a very good team from Durham named Bull City Gymnastics. We’ll need to keep any eye on these Bulls City girls they are super tough!
This was the third meet for eNeRGy girls team this year. This event was hosted at the Greensboro Collesium. Natalie landed her best overall performance of the season. Scoring on Vault: 8.450 (N/A), Bars: 9.125 (7th), Beam: 9.225 (4th), Floor: 9.500 (2nd), and All Around: 36.300 (5th).
This was the 2nd eNeRGy girls meet for the season and was hosted and held in the eNeRGy facility in Raleigh. The Prep Op Gold team had a good showing landing 1st place overall. Natalie scores were; Vault: 8.450 (7th), Bars: 8.675 (7th), Beam: 9.100 (3rd), Floor: 9.350 (1st), and All Around: 35.575 (3rd).
This event was Five Star’s first event in Bardstown, KY this season. The “My Old Kentucky Hom Invitation was hosted at Nichols County High School. The level four team had a reasonable showing with Brooklyn landing a 1st place finish in the bars and Natalie taking a 3rd place finish in the floor routine. Kate had the level 4 high overall score with a 35.5. This meet was particularly tough because their were eighteen girls classified in the 9 year old bracket.
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In keeping with last year’s promised tradition, I created another “Wykleville – year in review” scrapbook. I took most of the posts from Wykleville as the foundation and added many additional photos. Given the success from last year, I used Blurb again to produce the book and FotoFusion as the software creation tool. I upgraded to the “Extreme” version of FotoFusion in order to the full double page layouts and higher resolution. I also used Microsoft Autocollege product that to produce a few of the picture collages (soccer and gymnastic pages).
This year I did something a bit different on the front and back cover. In an effort to capture the look and feel of the Wykleville site, I wanted to duplicate the website layout on the book’s cover. I tried a few different methods to screen capture the site from the web browser, but was not happy with the results. The outputs from this method were quite low in resolution and would have looked crappy in the printed high resolution end product. The only alternative I could find was to create the site fully in a graphics program (Gimp). I’ve been using Gimp for many years. It is a free and open source program that mimics many aspects of the extremely expensive Adobe PhotoShop. This took a few hours of manual creation time, but I think was well worth the extra effort. This will allow me to remember the progression of the Wykleville site’s layout and design.
You can check out the finished product by clicking on the icon below…
This competition was hosted by Champion Gymnastics in Louisville.
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This was the second meet of the year for the 5 Star Gymnastics team. It was hosted by Top Flight Gymnastics at Randle Cooper High School. This meet was more widely attended and reunited 5 Star with two very tough squads (Legacy Gymnastics and Top Flight). The team’s event rotation was beam, vault, floor and bars. Below you will find event videos for Natalie on all four events.
This was the first meet of the year for the 5 Star Gymnastics team. It was hosted by Champion Gymnastics. This meet was more widely attended and reunited 5 Star with two very tough squads (Legacy Gymnastics and Top Flight). The team’s event rotation was beam, vault, floor and bars. Below you find videos of Natalie and the level 4 team scores.
Today was another momentous day for the Wykle family. Many firsts were accomplished today.
Here were a few shots from the Goodridge “open house” hosted on 08/18.
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At the day’s conclusion, all were happy and excitedly discussed their productive “firsts”!
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For anyone that follows Wykleville, you obviously know that Natalie is very involved in gymnastics. After a successful 2008/2009 season at level 3, Natalie was moved up to level 4 after the year end Five Star dinner. To further develop her skills and diversify her experiences, she signed up for a gymnastics camp that was held in nearby Batesville, Indiana. Natalie (and five team mates) attend a week long camp hosted by OCG. The obvious draw of this camp besides the learning opportunity was the interaction with former Olympic gymnasts. This camp’s director is former gold medalist Svetlana Boguinskaia (1988, 1992 & 1996). In addition to Svetlana, this camp would also be attended by Samantha Peszek from the 2008 Olympics. Natalie thoroughly enjoyed the experience and was beaming for days afterwards and has many items that have been signed by both Svetlana and Samantha. Treasures to last for sure!
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Saturday (04/18/09) marked the end of a very productive gymnastics season for the 5 Star Gymnastics level 3 team. The 5th and final meet took place in Hopkinsville, KY at Angles Gym. This meet wraps up the season as the KY State USGA meet. After a very shaky start, Natalie found her resolve and secured two first place finishes in the floor exercise and vault.
Uneven Bars – The day started out on the infamous uneven bars. This event has proven to be the most sketchy over the 5 meets this season. Natalie was lead-off and delivered a solid routine. No major blunders and a nice stuck landing. It appeared to be a foundation routine for the team to capitalize on. Then the score…8.65? Not what we were expecting. Natalie was visibly disturbed and even showed a few tears. The rest of the team’s scores hovered around mid 8’s with Kate pulling the top score with a 9.1. The 5 Star faithful took a deep breath and knew it was going to be a long day with scoring this tight.
Balance Beam – The next event was the balance beam. This has clearly been Natalie’s strongest event all season and should help to erase the unpleasantness of the bars. Kate and Brooklyn mustered 9.15 and 9.125 respectively. Natalie was the anchor member for this event. She had a beautiful mount and a nice Arabesque. Her handstand was one of the best I’ve seen her perform. She continued through the routine to the pivot and proceeded to execute her split jump. The jump was very nice with good height. She appeared to land fine, but her balance was off, sending her off the front side of the beam. This was her first fall in a competition…and her expression after remounting the beam says it all. She managed to finish her dismount but ran off sobbing towards the coach. She still managed an 8.8 even with the fall (0.5 point deduction).
As the team waited to move to the next event, Natalie was quite upset. Many people tried to console and encourage her. Both Shelley and I stayed out of the mix in order not to exacerbate the situation. Natalie appeared to regain her composure enough to move to the next event. BTW – At the conclusion of the meet, we found out that coach Terri had to finally issue a little tough love to Natalie. She told her that she would not be allowed to continue with the meet until she pulled herself together. Nicely done coach!
Floor Exercise – The floor routine was the next event on the rotation. Natalie had a solid routine and landed her best score (9.45) of the season.
Vault – The vault was the final event. Natalie carried her new found attitude to the vault and landed again her best score (9.35) of the season.
After the very questionable start, the Level 3 team put together a good showing for this season ending meet. Natalie finished the day with two first place finishes for the floor and vault in the 8JR age group. The floor and vault scores pulled her through in the all around to capture a respectable 5th place. She was beaming!
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Sunday (03/15/09) was the forth competition, Champion’s 17th Annual Derby Classic, attended by the Level 3 team from 5-Star Gymnastics this season. The meet was held in Louisville, KY at the MidAmerican Sports Complex and hosted by Champion Gymnastics. Today we were lucky to have a mid-day start. The level 3 team didn’t need to be at the gym until 12:30. We were able to make the 2 hour trek the morning of the competition. We were lucky to have Nagi in town so that she may take part in the activities.
Again, Natalie set a goal for herself prior to the start of the meet. She wanted to score a least a 9 on every event.
This meet started out with the balance beam. Natalie anchored the routine and had a very solid performance. She completed the routine within the event time and without significant balance checks. She posted a 9.35 which was the second highest score for the team on this event.
The team moved on to floor exercise, Natalie went in the last half of the event rotation. She had an average routine without any major errors. She scored a 9.1 and left the floor smiling.
The next event was the vault. Natalie was placed in the middle of the rotation. Here first vault didn’t appear to get the best height or distance, but the landing was solid. The second vault showed better form but had a small step on the landing. She squeaked out a 9.05…so far 3 for 3, now on to the dreaded uneven bars.
This event has consistently been the toughest and most prone to major mistakes. The bars would not test the 5 Star team today. Only a few mistakes were committed with Brooklyn taking the top position in the event with a 9.3. Natalie scored a solid 9.1.
On to the awards ceremony. Natalie and Brooklyn are both classified in the 8 JR age group. There were 11 girls competing in their specific age category. Given the size of this competition, the awards given were to be issued to only the top 50% (+1) of each age group. For the 8 JR group that would be the top 6 places in each event would be given recognition. This is a significant change from the 3 previous competitions and would be quickly noticed by the 5 Star team as the award ceremony started. It was clear by the facial expressions that the girls were clearly confused that everyone did not get an award. Welcomed to the big time ladies!
Natalie placed 2nd in the beam and 4th in the bars. Brooklyn scored a 1st in bars and 5 in beam. Natalie’s consistency across all 4 events afforded her a 5th place all-around in what appeared to be one of the toughest age groups. In a continuing moment of misunderstanding, Natalie was visibly upset (crying on the podium) due to the lack of awards for her and the team. See the picture below for a “upset face” that was a product of this building frustration. Shelley and I were quick to explain the situation regarding the scoring/awards system for this large competition. This will be a lesson for the future.
Then the team awards. The top three gyms were awarded team trophies. Legacy placed 1st with a 113.8, Champion placed 2nd with a 112.75, Todds scored 111.45 and landed them in 3rd. The 5 Star team placed 4th with a 110.7. Overall, a great showing for the 5 Star team and should be a good motivator for the last push to the state tournament in April.
Here is a recap of the scores of the entire level 3 5-Star team.
You can find videos of each of Natalie’s events: balance beam, floor exercise, vault, and bars.
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