Las Vegas Gymnastics Meet

 Tessa had a meet in Las Vegas on President's Day. We drove to Vegas on Sunday, found the hotel the meet would be at, and then checked in at South Point. We had seen some people who we're pretty sure were high and a man being arrested while we were on The Strip. I could see Tessa was very concerned about the people we were seeing out our windows, and asked if she was okay. She said she was fine, but as soon as we got into our room she took the notepad and pen from the desk and started writing about how much she does not like this city! Damon was searching around the room and said he found a Holy Bible in the drawers by the beds. Tessa asked if she could have it and read for a bit. I snuck a picture of her reading. After about 10 minutes she put the book away and said she felt better now. We were able to have a good little discussion about what we felt on The Strip and what we feel when we read the scriptures. We all agree we prefer the feelings we get from the scriptures. 

We got some dinner at The Shake Shack in our hotel and then went to bed early since the meet started at 7:45 the next morning.

It's been interesting to see how differently judges score things at different meets. These judges were very stingy! You could see the girls were frustrated each time their scores were posted. I don't think they watch other team's scores, or even their teammates scores, so they didn't realize that all the gymnasts received very low scores on every event. Morgan came over at the end and I told her she looked great (which she did!), and she was like, "Thanks. But I mostly got 8's and a 7, so I didn't do very good." I told her all the scores for everyone were in the 7's and 8's, so she shouldn't take her scores to heart. There was a mom standing nearby who must have heard us because she said, "These judges took away every single point they could from these girls!" I'm not sure why they took so many deductions, but I think the girls felt much better at the medals ceremony when they realized everyone's scores were much lower than they were used to. So comparatively, they were still placing pretty good.

Tessa did so great on her beam routine. She was the closest to sticking her cartwheel as she's ever been at a meet. We all really thought she had it, but fell off at the last second. That was a lot of improvement though!

She did great on bars and actually scored in the low 9's on that!

She tried a new vault routine for her first pass. She did a half-on, and then did her front handspring the second pass.

And she looked great on her floor routine.

They didn't hand out score cards at the end of this meet, so we don't remember what her scores were. Beam, vault, and floor were somewhere in the 8's and bars was in the low 9's. I don't know which event she took which place on either. We usually get that info to take home, but we didn't this time. Oh well. She took two 6th places, a 4th place, and a 3rd place.

Her score totals had her tied for 3rd place in the all-around. She and the girl she tied with are standing in the 4th place slot in the pic below. She was moved to the next grouping up, so she went away really happy with her bronze medal for the all-around after feeling like she didn't do her best based on the scores she kept getting.

And Arete finished in 1st place for the teams. It was a good way to end a frustrating morning.

We're proud of you Tess!