March 18, 2008

This past weekend we traveled to Oregon State to compete in the Salbasgeon Suites Invitational in Corvallis, Oregon. Unlike most of our other meets, this meet had four teams including Oregon State, Boise State, Sacramento State, and the Tigers! We headed off to Oregon early Friday morning to catch our flight in Kansas City. The plane ride was about four hours, but luckily there was a two hour time difference.

For the first time this season, we began the meet on floor. Everyone was pumped up for floor and we all did good routines. Last week in practice we focused on showing off dance and performing our floor routines to the audience, and I think we all did a very good job at executing our dance this week. D started us off great as usual and posted a 9.70. Ashley, Shi, and A all did 9.8 routines or better, starting the meet with a 48.925.

After floor we headed to vault and everyone hit solid vaults! D started off with a 9.725, and Becky was next with a 9.75, being just shy of her highest score on vault. I had a rough time in warm-up, but made it during the meet and tied Becky score with a 9.75. Again, Ashley and A both did amazing vaults and each scored 9.825, while Shi finished us off with a 9.85! We ended vault with a 49.00, and almost beat our season high vault score by .05! Bars and beam were both good events. Although both scores were not our highest of the season, we stayed focused and everyone fought hard.

Our final score for the meet was a 195.325, and we finished 3rd behind Oregon State and Boise State. Even though this was not our highest score of the season, we all went out there with a lot energy and confidence. We all know we still need to work on the "little things" like hitting handstands on bars and sticking landings, but altogether we stayed together as a team and had fun competing. Oregon was really nice and it was good to get another away meet in before regionals.

It took us all day Sunday to get home and after 10 hours of travel, Rob surprised us by giving us Monday off from practice! We will continue to focus on fine tuning our routines this week in practice and put a lot of emphasis on the little details. Next weekend is our last meet at the Hearnes Center this season as well as our senior meet. Come and watch our four seniors, Ashley, Nikki, Julie, and Lisa compete in their last meet at the Hearnes!!

Go Tigers!