This year at the annual Arizona State Men’s Gymnastics Intra Squad competition there were 3 teams again – Maroon, Gold, and Black. I was planning on being with the black team again since my jersey is black but when I showed up Colton (the team captain for the Gold team) asked if I would be on the gold team because they had the least amount of people. He also wanted my scores to count for their team. 🙂
The gold team started on Floor but I don’t have a routine together yet so I got to cheer on my teammates. Then we went to Pommel Horse where I was eager to show off 2 new skills – a half savado mount and a handstand dismount. The mount I had learned last year but wasn’t ready to put it into a routine until this year. The dismount I’ve been working on for a few years now and finally did it for the first time a week before the competition. Since the alternative was just a loop off the end which doesn’t even count as a dismount anymore (it did when I was in college which is why I never learned a handstand dismount back then) I decided to go for it.
After pommel horse we moved on to Rings which turned out very well for me. I did not add any new skills this year but I’ve been working on my handstands recently which paid off as I improved my execution score and placed 7th overall with a 12.6.
Next we did vault. While we were warming up one of my alumni friends came over dressed in a uniform and asked what event we were on. Daniel Bronnenberg warmed up a bit with us but waited for the next rotation to compete on the vault. It’s always good to see other alumni competing. For my vault I tried using a “waterfall” start which I learned from one of my kids’ running coaches recently. However my steps were off so I was just happy to do the vault safely.
The last event (for me, I’m not ready for hi bar yet) was parallel bars. I’ve been training a double pike dismount for about 6 months but I hadn’t done it on a hard surface yet (since college) so I opted for a layout to be safe.
Overall I had a great time competing with the ASU team again and look forward to next year when I hope to place in the top 3 on at least one event.
