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.
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Stinky Roundoffs
Our level 5s who just got done with compulsory season are going to try and jump right into the optional season as new 7s. They aren't entirely ready and are still acquiring skills (*cough*giants*cough*); but they've definitely come a long way in a short time.
Last Saturday one of their return stations was round-off slams. We once worked with putting a whoopie cushion up as a target a long time ago. Decided to pull it back out and use it (I bought three of these, with two still functional).
I think the rec parents in the bleachers were greatly entertained.
Gymnastics Center of Hershey: Where Character Counts
There are two stories at play in this post: One is in regards to level 7 hopeful Renata- a gymnast who moved out here, briefly trained at another gym; and who eventually settled with us a few months ago. The other story I'd like to relay is a shoutout to the Gymnastics Center of Hershey in Pennsylvania.
Our gym was at Lady Luck over the weekend. Given we only had one level 7 entrant, I was not needed to work the session; so conveniently showed up at leisure to lend morale support. I missed first rotation- vault (apparently it went well, as she scored a 9.325 and earned herself a 2nd place finish).
Renata had been struggling with bar giants. For months. She could do them well enough on strap bar. But on the regular rail? Fergetaboutit.
Months wore down to weeks away from her first level 7 competition in Vegas. Weeks wittled into days, and still no giants- perhaps 4-6 makes up until the last week before showtime.
She hit a couple of giants 7 days before the Lady Luck meet. A couple more over the weekend. Then the week of the meet, beginning last Monday and her final practice on Wednesday, she finally began making around 30% of her giants.
When I walked into the competition site Friday morning, she was on her 2nd rotation- bars, and did not miss a single giant attempt during warm-ups, as far as I noticed.
As she prepared for her competition routine, I was handed her cameraphone to film. Since I also wanted to film her routine with my phone, I held both phones in both hands. Renata being our only level 7, we shared the rotation with another team from the Gymnastics Center of Hershey. One of their gymnasts noticed me holding both cameras and kindly offered to hold one of them and film. I felt much obliged to her.
As Renata went through her bar routine, the girls from Hershey Pennsylvania were all cheering for her. Such sportsmanship certainly isn't a rarity- but I was still impressed as they cheered pretty vigorously- as vigorously as many teams cheer for their own teammates.
Renata hit the best level 7 routine she's done thus far (even her low bar clear hip had some life) and nailed her one giant in the routine. 4th place with a 9.250 which isn't too shabby for someone who didn't have giants 8 days ago, let alone any consistency before the big day.
Success on vault and bars was followed by disaster on beam. I'm glad I filmed it, because as emotionally embarrassing and painful as it may have seemed to Renata at the time with 3 falls, it really deserves a place of honor in her video scrapbook as a blooper hallmark when she fell on her mount. Life should always be taken with humor; and Renata was able to laugh about it, later on in the day.
During the beam routine, the Hershey gymnasts invested themselves in Renata's performance, cheering very loudly their support. It wasn't just a token gesture- they watched with interest from beginning to end. They cheered for her by name. They displayed the exact kind of sportsmanship and conduct that I wish to cultivate within my own gym. It is not easy for many gymnasts to compete as a lone member of their team; and these gymnasts gave Renata the support she needed in the absence of her own teammates. For that my coworkers, Renata, and myself are entirely grateful to the coaches and gymnasts of the Gymnastics Center of Hershey. They are not only building strong athletes but building strong people of moral fiber and character. My deepest admiration for their program.
And no message could have been any clearer...If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and then make a change...
Noticing Crislin's mom putting up tribute posts on her Facebook for the King of Pop, although not a fan myself, I was moved by her passion to put together a video for her and her daughter.
*UPDATE*Steve McCain linked/shared/embedded this concert video of MJ in Bucharest on Facebook, singing "Man in the Mirror". I don't know whether to be jubilantly mesmerized by his charismatic star-power over people's emotions or a bit frightened by it.
Julia came in to help participate in Sircey's birthday party, today. Before the party, she did a standing back flip by herself after a couple of spots from Yefim; then did a layout on bars! To my knowledge, she's done neither before, by herself.
Pretty good for a non-workout day.
*UPDATE* Julia's comment in this post made me decide to post a clip the device she brought up. Coach John is a master manipulator of this and uses it regularly. Between Yefim and I operating on different pages from the book, we come close to "decapitating" Sircey against the top bar (Yefim thought I was ready to bring her down, when what I was trying was John's method of swinging the rider under the high bar).
This happened on February 5th. She really gave me a scare, but was none the worse for wear. Looked hyperextensively pretty bad, though.
I first learned about the phrase "epic fail" from Julia.
Aside from this video, I'd like to publicly say that Julia is the most thoughtful and considerate human being on the face of the planet. Catastrophic success, right there!
Thanks for sending me the video message! It made my life!
Erin put me up to this, as apparently Julia told her, "He's put everyone's routines up but ours."So we intentionally conspired to leave her out of the previous routine post as an EPIC inside joke.
Julia's been hassling me, btw, about Facebook. She "friended me" and indignantly says it's rude not to friend people back. I don't use Facebook. I have an account in case I feel the nostalgic urge to look up old college and high school friends (I borrowed Coach Dan's myspace account to do this before, as I don't have a myspace). But I don't "network" on it; I don't use it. I have all these friend requests I've been hesitant to respond to, because I don't quite know what it's all about.
My favorite radio station has been running a program ad, with excerpts of Hugh Hewitt, who's been on the cutting edge of internet technology (including blogs) and is now into Twitter, expressing the same bafflement. It's a pretty funny ad as he asks, does he "just friend EVERYBODY?" Why?
I caught this program clip, too, that reflects and expresses perfectly, the Facebook dilemma:
At the risk of embarrassing Julia, I'd like to highlight and underscore again, what a good person she is. This is the kid who went to New Orleans last summer with her church youth group to help rebuild homes for those who suffered loss during Katrina and Rita.
A couple of weeks ago, Julia gave me an unexpected card:
I think what might have triggered this was an inadvertent admission that I wasn't being paid to help Nika, as Julia wondered if she was taking my time away from teaching a private to Nika (I was helping both her and Julia- who got "thrown out of the house", so came to watch Erin work on her floor routine- out at the same time on a Sunday).
LA Lights Holiday Invitational 2008 (Level 7s and 9s)
Thea missed bars because she's still nervous about the dismount. She slowed down her giant, and fell off; even after getting back on and completing the routine, you can see her trying to control the descent.
I think she had only been doing this full routine about a week, prior (did some decent routines during practice, the week before).
Hadn't seen her floor routine, either until about a week ago. She was ahead of the music and kind of got lost toward the end. Still needs to learn dance, as well as more familiarity with her routine.
Thea:
I was in a bad spot to film Erin's floor. Missed her and Nik(k)i's beam.
She hasn't done giants since summer. Weird mental thing, since she's been doing them just fine, prior.
Erin:
Nikolina hadn't done a full floor routine until the week before the meet. It's her old routine.
Both she and Erin only started focusing on paks for the upcoming meet.
I've known Nika since she was about five or six. Formerly a competitor at Gymnastics Olympica, this past year saw some dramatic changes in her life as she found a new school to attend, as well as leaving the gym that had cultivated much of her present gymnastics skills.
Currently, she is a migrant gymnast without a gym to call her own. Hopefully, that will change in the future. Right now, though, she loves her school and is in a sabbatical transition with regard to her competitive life as a gymnast. She trains at Valley College, and here and there, where her mom can take her for open workouts.
Even though I've already used this song in a previous video, and I don't like to repeat what's been done when there are so many songs out there begging to be used in my videos, knowing how much Donna and Nika (and much of the rest of the world, it would seem) loved seeing this musical, to the point of tears, I just thought they deserve this song, as well. Besides, I'm using the musical version here; I think I used a rock version in Crislin's video. Gymnasts know how to defy gravity, so it's only appropriate that this song gets worn from use.
Some of the footage from the video is taken of her shoot with Country Crock advertising, which happened at LASG.
I've known Keli for 5 or 6 years, at least. For some time now, I'd look over at her and notice her doing more sitting than gymnasticking; or looking pensive. I guess it was predictable: Last week she clued me that when this session ends, she was done. She wasn't progressing, and her mind wasn't into it. Tuesday night after Robyn and I were done with our advanced class, she sat down with us and announced it was her last day.
Most of the footage in this film was shot that day:
Keli leaving makes me sad in a way similar to what it felt like to have the gym close down. Same with Gianna (I didn't even know she quit within a session at LASG, until weeks later). I know that it was probably her time to move on; but it's still always sad to have a chapter close; especially when things end on a note like this. She just felt she was wasting her time and her parents' money if she wasn't going to get better and pursue gymnastics in college.
I hope she treasures her memories and the skills she did manage to develop through gymnastics. I remember trying to talk her into moving up to team for a couple of years before she finally left the intermediate level nest. It seemed like her excuse had to do with money; but when I mentioned it to her dad one day, there was no indication of that and she moved up shortly thereafter. It was like he didn't know she had an interest.
I miss the beautiful young woman she almost is ("almost", not because she isn't beautiful, but because she's still breaking out through her teen years) and the scrawny little booger she once was (not that she wasn't always beautiful back then either).
She says she will pursue pole-vaulting. Maybe she can come in and workout once in a while, since p-vaulters do a number of the same conditioning exercises as gymnasts.
I'm thankful for the memories you've given me, Keli- good and bad! Whatever you do, I wish you the best of luck and hope you always celebrate life to the fullest. Viva la vida!
Thea's the only kid whose gymnastics career I've been charting since her first backhandspring. There's a big year-long gap between this and her last video. I plan to fill in that gap someday (there's one project that's just been gathering dust, but might one day see completion). The problem I ran into, is too much footage to sift through (most of which I should just delete, as I capture a lot of "worthless" stuff, rather than stellar milestones) for one; and lack of creative juices, for another.
I've wanted to keep a constant theme and continuity with her videos, using dramatic music- even though she's actually got a rather goofy personality, much of the time. After the Conan music ran out in her videos, so too did her progress in developing the kind of strength that I think makes her stand apart from the average gymnast. Being able to do 10-20 handstand presses in a row or a V-seat and planche just aren't emphasized.
She's capable of demonstrating good posture and form in her gymnastics; but seems to seldom display it. And with inadequate dance training, she still often looks rather sloppy, with messy legs and posture. Which isn't to say she isn't making progress. To me, it's just a bit weird and uneven; but it could just be me.
The title of the video (like many of my videos) is silly, as my original idea when I first started making videos is to parody movies. Thea and I both like the Narnia books and the music to the movies. What I love in this particular video, is the transition from SMGC to LASG. If I remember Prince Caspian correctly, a subway train rushes by the kids, transitioning them to Narnia. As luck would have it, when I was out filming in front of the SMGC building, one of the vehicles that went by was a FedEx truck. Just by luck and without the intention to do so (I only had the germ of an idea, not yet fully developed), when I filmed in front of LASG, I also happened to capture a FedEx truck going by. When going through the footage, I put 2 and 2 together, and had my transition.
There really isn't much gymnastics in the video; I think if you remove the opening and closing credits, it amounts to about a 2 minute video. But it's the drama of the music that creates a story to tell.
I think the quote at the beginning is perfect for the gym transition we went through this past year (carrying on a "tradition" in the Thea series of videos), from mourning the closing of SMGC to celebrating the excitement of change provided by LASG, just around the bend.
Oh, and lest I forget: Today is Thea's Day Thursday. It's Thea's birthday. Happy 11th to someone who, each day, never fails to make me feel cherished and appreciated. I hope I never fail to reciprocate the sentiment.
Julia's made big strides in recent weeks, working on her free-hip shoot to handstand. Today, before official workout began, she got herself excited on the first one. Subsequent attempts were up there, but arched on the way up and she dropped back down on the "wrong" side of the bar- which in itself is a change to something different. This clip is the best of the 3 or 4 that I filmed. Good job Petey Juuuuliaaa!!!
This was a quick, spur of the moment video, as I discovered a new favorite song by Jason Mraz, "I'm Yours". The melody just has a certain "happy spirit" to it (at least to me). So a couple of hours later: Walla! A new LASG video.
I was torn between using the original Mraz version, or this cover, by Chris Cendana (Mispelled his last name in the closing credits- grrr!). I like the Happy Slip Cup Beat, so I opted for the latter. I don't know why I find it so uplifting, but it's my new fave until I wear out the song after a hundred listens.
Within the last year, we lost a few girls (Ana, Michele, Ash'lee, Mackie); within the beginning of this year, we lost Brenda and Elana, with other girls who drifted and became inconsistent in their workouts with pressures of school and waning interest, buttressed with knowledge that the gym would be closing.
I thought I'd include some footage of Ana, Brenda, and Elana; but much of the rest of the footage is shot from the last two months, where attendance was low and the gym rather cold and lonely (Keli had a solo workout, MLK Day)...semi-depressing and struggling with morale(at least in my mind- maybe others were having a cheerful good time).
I bookended the video with Erin and Thea. Being a quick edit, it just seemed the thing to do. I'm sure I'll feel differently tomorrow. But for now, it's a wrap.
Thea acquires her strength by getting piggyback and shoulder rides from the older girls.
