A cool place for friends and family members of Santa Monica Gymnastics Center to come hang out. So nuke the popcorn in the microwave; Snoopy dance...dance..dance around the room...then pull up a chair, and be prepared to laugh and cry; to feel embarrassed and inspired; and to just sit back, relax and enjoy these music videos.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
They Call Her "Ita".....
....but that's not her name. It's Elvira Villa. And she goes by "Ita".
Ok, I may just live long enough to regret this....
I had half of Ita's Mini LIGHTS on bars and set up a few additional stations. Sammy, who's about 4 or 5 years old, acquired such vital information that she felt it urgent enough to leave her station to come disrupt the station where I was at, finding me in the middle of spotting her classmate on bars. So what was it that was so important that it required my undivided attention? Well...Sammy shared the following breaking news with me:
"Someone farted."
Yup...breaking news, alright. She said it with such gravity, too....
I told her to hold her breath and go back to her station.
I woke up 3:30 this morning, just out of the blue; got out of bed and went to the computer. 2 hours later, I printed out this video, uploaded to YouTube, then went back to sawing some Z's until I had to be up at 6:30am to get ready for work.
These are Ita's pre-team girls, plus the developmental level 4's who moved up over the summer (Emma, Sofie, and Grace came out of our SMGC intermediates/LASG advanced class). It was their first meet, and they did really well.
Grace is so shy, it's amazing to see her actually out there competing and performing. When she was with me, I had the darn'dest time getting her to remember anything resembling even parts of a routine. Strong and talented kid; but her habit and nature is more to do this all day long:
She always said she wanted to move up to team; but I think that was to be around Brenda and Keli, two older team girls. A strong kid with good-looking backhandsprings almost immediately, Hamest invited her to be on team earlier in the year. Mulan went, but Grace wasn't mentally ready. But around summer, she actually became serious about it.
Grace first came to SMGC from Broadway during summer camp in 2007. She hated being pushed in her stretching, and they did that a lot at Broadway; they do that a lot at LASG too, but she can take it now.
Grace:
I've known Emma since she was 6 or 7; she took a break, then came back a couple of years later. Another very strong, talented kid. Rather fearless on bars (she made my heart drop when she said, "hey look Michael", then did a mill circle on the high bar), she could do pullovers from the high bar right away, and started making kips prior to summer. Sloppy as all heck, you'd never recognize her now after only a couple of months on team.
Emma:
Sofie was with us at SMGC for quite some time as well. It's gratifying to see that she's hung in there and made it to team. I'm always happy when any of our gymnasts make that big transition to the world of competitive artistic gymnastics.
She had her round-off backhandspring on floor before moving up to team, but somehow lost it. I thought that maybe she had gotten sloppy on them, so that the coaches told her not to do it. But that's not the case. Sofie told me she lost it.
I'm sure it's still there, somewhere....
Sofie:
I've always liked Gracie. She and her sister Janie came to SMGC during summer camp in 2007 and had a great time. I thought we'd gain them in the Fall, but they returned to JAGS. When SMGC closed down, they came looking for us, and arrived at LASG. She went straight into Ita's pre-team class, tried rhythmic, then in the Fall, returned back to artistic.
Gracie:
Alejandra picked a very tough sport for her. But her love for the sport has made her determined not to give up. Through hardwork and perseverence she's made it to level 4 team. She has come a really, really long way in just a few months. She went from someone whose feet barely left the ground more than a couple of inches in a backhandspring, to someone who got her round-off backhandspring and has even done some standing ones.
Alejandra:
Tatiana's on pre-team with Ita, but comes on the days that I don't help Ita with her pre-team class. I always see her and her father around, though.
Tatiana:
Alexa's the kind of girl that boldly holds her head high and tells the world, "I'm beautiful, and people love me!" Really, thre's no lack of self-esteem in her bearing. She acts like she's in a beauty pageant. You can see it in her glance as she's walking out to do her floor routine.
Alexa:
Sarah's undoubtedly Ita's top student. She's so talented....she had never done a back flip on trampoline before, and within five minutes was doing them by herself with a very nice tuck. The team really wants her.
Sarah:
The "A-Team":
They were minus Miriam, who injured her ankle earlier in the week. They were on their own rotation, and I missed much of their routines as I was shadowing the "B-team" and pre-team girls.
Levels 5-9 also competed, and if I get around to it, I'll put their routines up as well.
*Note: For those jumping out of their seats from an auto-start video, scroll down and shut it off. I apologize, but I uploaded a previous video on Gymnast Tube, which doesn't appear to have anything but auto-start mode on their videos. So until that particular post gets pushed down off the frontpage of this blog (or, I get smart, and upload it to a different host), you'll have to scroll down and turn the video off.
*UPDATE*08/10/2008: Thanks to Coach Jamie, he pointed out the change I needed to make in the embed code, to shut off the auto-start.
This video has been in the works for about 2 months. I could have completed it about a week ago, but wanted to getAlla(owner of LASG) in the video. I didn't realize she was going on vacation (I would have gotten her sooner, had I known; same with Yefim, who took off for Beijing), and she was back in the gym yesterday. The song choiceis from American Anthem, which everyone involved with gymnastics back in the 80's probably remembers. Kids nowadays are not familiar with it (being a box-office smash hit and all.....[/sarcasm]). I think the germ for the idea happened with something making the song cross my mind, and Ita's clapping. Ita loves to clap. Everyone knows it's her when she does it, while warming up her classes.
I tried to get a representation from all the programs offered atLASG. Parkour is the only major one that I didn't capture on film.
Even harder to get everyone into the frame of a 4 minute song, and I tried not to dwell on the guilt-factor and worry about "equal representation" (some people appear quite often); so I mostly stuck in what clips I had that fit the "theme" or "feel" of the video. A lot actually had to be snipped out, as I can only squeeze so much in. The good thing is, I have some good stuff to use in future vids, too.
Titulares Y Más, a Spanish-language late-night television talk and variety show aired by Telemundo, came to Los Angeles School of Gymnastics to film Coach Ita with 7 year old, level 5 gymnast Talitha Jones. It was filmed on a Monday morning at 5:30am; I believe it aired on July 4th of the same week, which would be a Friday.
Probably the first LASG kid who befriended me from day one when I began helping Ita with her class, Hannah is shown here training in a private with coach Ita.
Ita was horrified by her "yelling" and "shouting" at Hannah, when I played the video back to her. I think it's the "hearing your own voice" kind of effect. Really, this is rather mild, what's in the video. Her kids are desensitized and used to it.
So I hope she'll forgive me for uploading this video. It's for Hannah's family.
I think it looked pretty good; Ita says it's about 50% of what she wants out of Hannah.
Besides her private today, Hannah took class, and it looks likely that she'll be doing her round-off backhandspring in Sunday's fun meet (yay!).
