Chattanooga Classic

After work on Friday, I met the family at home and we headed out for Chattanooga.  We all love Chattanooga, and have been excited about this trip for months!!  We weren't able to head out of town until about 5:30 and lost an hour traveling, so we didn't check into the hotel until around 8:30.

Madelyn was competing first thing Saturday morning, so we decided to just order some take out and eat in the room right before bed. 

I woke up about 6:00 Saturday morning, got Madelyn up, loaded up her competition bag and started working on her hair.  We only had to walk a few steps from the hotel to the convention center, but we wanted to be sure to get there by 7:30.  Unfortunately, Clint took the girls downstairs to eat the complimentary breakfast at 7am, and learned that on weekends they don't serve breakfast until 7:30.  OOPS!  So Madelyn had a bag of fruit snacks and goldfish for breakfast before her big competition.  Not off to a good start....

Before walking in to the meet.

 We've seen a huge improvement in Madelyn's gymnastics over the last few months.  She always scored pretty well when competing in the spring, but we really feel as if she could be scoring more 9s now.  The last 2 meets she had were small, in-house type meets.  She did pretty well, scoring between 8.2 and 9.4 on everything.  None of those meets included awards or placed the girls.  She was SUPER pumped to finally be working towards some medals. 

They split Madelyn's team into 2 groups, and she competed against 6 other gyms as well.  Her first event was bars, which is usually her favorite.

Nailed her landing!



She did great on bars!!  You could tell when she got off that she was happy.  Her score flashed a 9.1.  We were super pumped!!!

Next up was beam.  At Madelyn's very first gymnastics meet in January, she froze on the beam and forgot half her routine, earning her a score of only 7.5.  Since then the balance beam has always been her weakest event, and the one that makes her most nervous.  However, I feel like she also has been working the hardest on beam lately.

It was finally her turn, and I think I held my breath the entire time.  The only picture I got was of her right after the saluted the judges.

She did GREAT on the beam!!  As soon as she hit her dismount, I ran over to watch the scoreboard.  I really felt like that was the best I've ever seen her look on the beam.  I waited, waited and watched the judges signal for the next girl to start.  Madelyn's score never showed up.  At first I though maybe they were just taking a while, but the next girls' score flashed and Madelyn's had never appeared!! They were rotating to the next event, so I ran over to tell Madelyn's beam coach that they never flashed her score.  She was concerned, but assured me that the judges had written it down somewhere.  You know me though, I am NOT a patient person so I was MAD!!!  An hour later, right before the awards we finally learned that she had scored an 8.8!  That's her best beam score in a meet, so we were THRILLED!

After beam was floor exercise.  Throughout the meet I had been checking in with the other half of our team, and found out that not a single girl on our team had scored a 9.0 or above on the floor exercise!!  That's highly unusual, as we generally have several girls scoring in the 9.4-9.6 range, so we knew the judges were being extra tough.  Madelyn did her thing, and looked pretty good.  In my head, I estimated she would probably get about a 8.5.  Her score flashed and it was a 7.9.  As soon as Madelyn saw it you could tell she was upset, so I was quick to give her a thumbs up and assure here that she had done great.

The last event of the day was vault.  When we were at River City in the spring, vault was usually Madelyn's highest score.  However, at Let it Shine they don't practice it nearly as often.  I was pretty nervous because during warm ups, her first vault she missed the mat completely and didn't even do her handstand.  NOT GOOD.  However, on her first vault I saw her run with an extreme amount of power, and she even blocked when her hands hit the mat!  We knew then that she did well, and sure enough she scored a 9.275!

Overall, Chattanooga Classic was a super exciting meet for Madelyn.  She earned her first gold medal for her vault.  She also earned her first ever silver medal for her bar routine, 8th place on both floor and beam, and earned 4th place in the All Around.  What a great day!!!!!

First place!!!!!!

2nd place isn't too shabby either!

I love this one because she looks so happy and doesn't at all seem concerned with the fact that she got 8th place.  We tell her over and over that as long as she knows she did her best, she should be super proud!!!!

Her team won 2nd place!!