Actually, this was taken after she had been tumbling around for about 18 months or so. When I first put her in gymnastics, I had no clear idea of what I was doing, we lived in North Carolina and that was the only program that she would deem to go to. It was a big gym that had all of the big mats laid out and the girls were so little and chubby that the coaches would just run them through these little obstacle courses.
Then we moved to Ohio and her second gym, in the picture above, was where she really got moving, little cartwheels, and jumping, holding onto the uneven bars…I could watch her muscles getting stronger! She loved it. We kept going. She kept growing.
Then we had to move to New Jersey and she thought she would just die. Little did she know that Blake's Gymnastic's and Miss Tracey were just about to enter her life and make gymnastics EVEN BETTER. Ev' love of gym is so great that, before we even had furniture here, we had her signed up for gym and she was going.
All I can say about gymnastics for her as a person is this, there have been no negatives. She is a strong minded person and I believe that gymnastics help her learn how to develop that side of herself in a positive way. She has to come up with the determination to go to practice day after day and week after week, on her own- and she does. Gymnastics comes with a lot of disappointments, a lot of falling as your muscles learn these tricks over the years and you have to be tough to keep taking that kind of beating. Still, she keeps it fun, she is always smiling and ready to go.
As her Mom, I love it because I see the teen girls in gym who are dedicated being in a group together and they have no time for shenanigans, nor do they want shenanigans in their lives as that would make their scores drop and who wants that?
I have compiled some slide shows of Ev's meets from her years as a gymnast. Feel free to watch as many or as few as you like. Please keep in mind that these skills are works in progress. Also with things like her vault? For this year she just moved up to a new level so she had to switch over to "the big vault" and if you watch close through the videos, you can see her improvement. I have been very proud of her, watching her work hard getting strong enough to get over that thing! First off, you have to remember that she only weighs 47 pounds so she has had to learn how to really pound the spring board to get any bounce and then she has to get those legs back together and over the back end and nail the landing!! And never once has she cried or thrown a fit or refused to go to gym, she eats up the challenge, she wants to go. I love her.
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