A Good Decision

Well, after today, I believe that moving Meagan up to the next class level in gymnastics was a good decision. Today she had her first class with the preschool pre-team girls. I was a little surprised, truthfully, at the content of the class. It was made up of 4 other little girls, all of whom are 5 and 6 years old. When I realized that, I was a little concerned, but I figured I'd watch and see how she did. I was pleasantly surprised.

She got right out there with them and jumped right in. No hesitation. When she didn't know what she was doing, she watched someone else in the class and copied them. She took instruction from her coach really well. She stayed focused the entire time. She even shook it off when she fell and got right back up again. I could tell at about 50 minutes she was getting tired. Just before beam, toward the end of their bars rotation, she was wearing out a little, but she hung in there.

They started on floor and vault (the vault is a spring board, a mat, and a barrel mat to dive over. I was surprised to see that they were doing fundamentals for front handspring vaults already. But she did what she was told, no hesitation, and she did it well. After floor/vault, they moved to bars and conditioning...one girl on the bar at a time, the others at various conditioning stations. They are all working on pull-overs on bars. Again, I was surprised to see that Meagan was really right there with the other girls as far as skill level goes. She was pulling over with just a little spot, which was true for all of the girls in her class. Funny, she wasn't too keen on the sit-ups station (LOL...she's my child!) The last rotation was beam....HIGH beam. They didn't even step foot on low beam. Her coach had 2 girls go first (on 2 separate beams at the same time). Then Meagan was in the second group to go. The first time, she climbed up, and only got as far as her hands and knees. She froze, and was not about to stand on the thing. He helped her up, and helped her get her bearings, then he went to the other end of the beam (where she was headed). First she was just supposed to walk the length of the beam toward him...her walk was definitely a lot more of a foot shuffle than steps...she never picked her feet up...LOL! After 2 passes down walking forward, they did one pass walking backward. Surprisingly, she did better going back than going forward...??? By the time they got to the leg kicks, she was chillin' on the beam, and was telling him she didn't need his help for anything. She got over her uncertainty quite quickly.

So, it was a longer class (by 15 minutes), and she is definitely the youngest in the group, but all in all, it seems like a really good fit for her. When we got in the van to go home, she told me she wanted to stay so she could do gymnastics for a longer and longer and longer time. I guess she likes it. :)