Saying Goodbye :(

Wow. This has been one crazy year.

If you are unaware, this blog is an assignment for Honors English and my teacher told us to write our final post about ways we have changed this year. Since I live on the wild side (and because I asked Mr. Parker and he said it was ok) I am going to write more about THINGS that have changed in my life over the year.

1. Cody Quit Gymnastics
If you are a peasant and didn't know... My best friend quit gymnastics at the beginning of the year. It was tragic at the time but it's A-OK because were still friends, even though we don't necessarily see each other nearly as much as we used to, we still hang out and play pool *trying not to laugh at how much me and cody suck at pool because people are still taking the sage test rn* It still sucks not having Cody at gym but its all good in the hood.

2. Kylie joined our team!
After Cody left, gymnastics was kinda rough, no offense to my other teammates but I didn't have my twin, The Co to my Ma (maggie + cody = maco). BUT THEN...Kylie joined and at first I was all like "Ew she's gross and also better than me at beam" but then I was like "hey, she's kinda chill".  Over the school/competition year we became BFFs. Basically now Kylie is my sister. We are the kind of friends where we are so close that we can fight with each other instead of awkwardly agreeing with each other so we don't hurt feelings.

3. I had the best season of my life.
This competition season was one of the best. I placed at every competition and my team always swept the podium! I got some of the highest scores ever and had a blast.

4. I started training with the Optional Girls
This year, about half way through the competition season, I started training with the optional girls (level 6-10). This was an incredible opportunity for me because I got much better coaching and the gymnastics was just more fun. This is one of the main reasons why I did so well at State and Regionals.

5. I got 2nd All-Around at state
At the beginning of the year, if you had told me that I would get 2nd all around at state, that the difference between me and first was 0.025, that I would score a 37.1 and that I made the state team, I would tell you that you were crazy. I know for a fact that these scores were a direct result of my new coaches and training schedule! State was an amazing experience and I wish I could do it all over again!

6. I competed for Utah at Regionals
I had an absolutely AMAZING experience competing on the Utah State gymnastics team in Long Beach at regionals. I met so many amazing girls and had an amazing experience. The Utah team got 3rd (that's really good)!!

The Utah State Gymnastics Team

7. I quit
Sadly this competition season was my last. I have decided to quit gymnastics. Gymnastics has been one of the best decisions I have ever made and I am so thankful. Thank you so much to everyone who has made the past years of my life so amazing. Thank you to my team for all the amazing memories and experiences. I will never forget any of it! I love you all to the moon and back!

Goodbye,
Maggie

I don't know why but this picture of me and Kylie running into
the sunset seemed necessary. 

State Meet!

AAHAGHAHAAAJAAaaa!!!!

Holy Guuuuuuuuuuuuuuacamole!!

I probably just had THE best 3 days of my life!

Wednesday
Kylie and I set off for St. George! It was about a 5 hour drive...it seems really long but it was fun because we watched movies and jammed to music the whole way down! We went to our resort and immediately hit the pool! We swam for about an hour and then hit the spa! We went in the steam room, the 'relaxation room' and the INCREDIBLE showers! (seriously though I can't even describe how cool these showers were!) We headed into town for pizza and a movie! It was a SUPER fun night!

Thursday (MEET DAY!)
We woke up early Thursday morning and sat in hammocks to watch the sun rise and then headed to the resort restaurant for breakfast. We enjoyed a breakfast buffet and tried to get in touch with Brenna and Tasia. We had about 2 hours before our spa appointments so we went on a short hike. We found this huge rock spiral thingy in the middle of nowhere and walked through the entire thing! (It was questionable because it looked a little satanic). We "sacrificed" our hair ties at the middle of the spiral because apparently you have to sacrifice something. We went for a quick dip in the pool and we ran into Brenna who just so happened to be on her way to the spa! Since our spa appointment was in about 30 minutes, we got out of the pool and went with Brenna to the spa. We showered and changed into robes and slippers and headed into the "relaxation room" to wait with Brenna...and guess who happened to be in the relaxation room...TASIA! When they called me and Kylie we headed up to the salon and got our hair and makeup done. After our spa treatment we (the 4 of us) walked to all of our rooms to get our leos and warmups. (this took a while because the resort was VERY spread out and we were all in different buildings (except for me and Kylie of course)). Afterwards we headed to the meet!! It was about a 30 minute drive.

The competition went AMAZINGLY! I won't bore you with details but I got 3 personal bests on vault, bars and all around!
Scores:
Bars: 9.355
Beam: 8.9
Floor: 9.4
Vault: 9.4
AA: 37.1 (!!!!!)

Awards was amazing! As we were waiting for our awards, these meet people came up to Me and Kylie and told us that we were in the top 5 of all 72 girls there! That meant that we had made the Utah state team to compete against the other states at regionals!!!!

Awards:
Vault: 1st
Bars: 2nd
Beam: 4th
Floor: 2nd
AA: 2nd

The girl that beat me and won first all around beat me by only .005!!!!!!!
All in all one of the best meets i've ever had!!

Saturday
We got up early again and cleaned the hotel room and packed our bags. Emery has a pool house in St.George so we went there for a pool party! It was great! We drove home and it was depressing because our amazing trip was over :(

Here are some pictures!!

In the "relaxation room" at the spa

Pool Party!

Pool Party Selfie

Driving into St. George

The relaxation room

xoxo
Gossip Girl

Jk

-Maggie

Whats Happnin?

Hey there friends
I just wanted to give you some quick updates on things that are going on for me right now. (does anybody actually care?)

1. State
In about 48 hours I will be on my way (a 5 hour drive) to Saint George for one of the most important meets of the year...STATE MEET! If I do well at state meet (get a certain all around score) then that means I qualify to go to regionals...which just so happens to be in LONG BEACH! Hell Heck Yes!!! (Are you happy Kalli?). Anywho I am suuuupper excited to go to the warm weather and poolside lemonades in saint george but I am also super nervous! I may or may not write a blog post about it but idk bro.

2. New Schedule/Training
If you don't know this (I don't know why you would) but I am no longer doing the same training schedule and I am not training with Tina anymore. Xcel Gold (Maggie, Kylie, Tasia and Brenna) are training with the level 6 girls now which is AWESOME!! The coaches are much better and I love getting to train more hours per week! The only thing that kinda sucks is that we don't get to train with Emery...single tear

3. Bye Tasia
Tasia has told us the extremely sad news that she isn't going to compete next year. She is going to finish out this competition season and then quit. She does have a good reason though. She is a pro ski racer and skiing and gymnastics just don't mesh very well. It sucks but it's better for her because she had a crazy insane athletic schedule. When she wasn't skiing she was at gym and when she wasn't at gym she was at school. She also gets a lot of injuries which sucks because injuries suck.

Well I guess that's all I have to say in this post. I really have no idea what to post so you guys should leave comments telling me what you want me to post about. Hey guess what...this is my last post of this quarter! Wow that went by really fast! If you didn't know already, we are required to have a link and a picture in all of our blog posts. I don't really know what to put a picture of so I'll just give you a picture of the hotel I'm staying at in St. George...

The hotel i'm staying at in St. George...can you tell
why I'm excited?!?! Creds

Here's a link to a random website -----> Click for a surprise

Ke$ha Later,
Maggie

GTC Meet

Why hello there!

This weekend I had yet another competition! This one was in Lehi at a gym called GTC.  This is one of my teams favorite meets!

Our first event was beam, YIKES! Brenna went up first and I was second.

*side note*
Just so you are aware, this is the order the team always goes in at competitions:
Brenna
Maggie
Kylie
Tasia
It isn't in any particular order, we just like it that way.

Back to beam.  I went up after Brenna.  I stuck everything but my cartwheel and scored an 8.45. Beam wasn't our best, and you can't blame us because it was our first event of the competition.

Next was floor.  We waited, and waited, and waited, until finally it was our turn.  I walked onto the floor and did a great routine.  Except that I tripped over myself a little bit in one of my dance moves. I scored a 9.25 getting me first place!

After floor, we headed over to vault.  I had okay vaults, not my best. I scored a 8.85, third place.  The funniest thing happened at vault though.  When tasia was going, she hit the springboard and the moment her hands hit the table she made the funniest noise! She was like. "HUUUUUUHGGGGHHUH!" We were all laughing so hard!

Our last event was bars.
If you remember from my last post, my bars were not very good because I got a huge deduction for not having a vertical cast on high bar. But this time was different! My cast was great and I got an 8.9!

My scores!

Awards!
We waited FOOOOOORRRRRREEEEVVVEEEERRRR!! I'm not joking.  After bars we waited about half an hour for awards to start and then there was about an hour of awards before my age division.  But finally we started awards!
Vault: 3rd
Bars: 5th
Beam: 7th
Floor: 1st!!
AA: 3rd

In the team awards, our team placed 3rd which was really good considering there was like 14 teams there.  Kylie did really well and scored first place all around.

After the meet we (of course) went to noodles and company for some celebratory noodles!  It was super fun and we had a great time.  After noodles we had some cupcakes from Sweet Tooth Fairy!  The meet ran really late so basically we were eating dinner at around 10ish.

Overall this was a pretty good meet! Here are some pictures!

Waiting for Floor to start

Sideways, but whatevs

After awards

Back at noodles!

Kylie taking ugly snapchats.

That's all for this post, vote on my poll!

Maggie

P.S. My next meet is the winter classic which is not for a couple of weeks

Bailies Meet

EW

BAILIES


My team when we found out we were going to Bailies this year...

Creds: pix good

Just so you know, Literally every person on my team absolutely hates this meet.  We always do terrible at it and we just hate meet overall.

But this year, was different.  We all did very well at the meet and we were very happy with the turnout.

Our first event was vault. We had a great warm-ups and all four of us stuck our vaults and were fully satisfied with our scores.  I got a 9.025 which I was very happy with.  We were excited and nervous as we headed for bars.

Next was bars.  I was especially nervous for bars because I had been falling in my squat on in practice almost every time.  Warmups shook me up because I made exactly one squat on.  Brenna went before me and I was second.  I saluted the judges and turned to face the bars.  I stood on the springboard for what seemed like forever trying to get my nerves to calm down.  I kipped up, stooped my feet onto the bar and jumped. I made it!!! I nailed my routine and stuck the landing. Unfortunately, the judges thought otherwise.  I scored an 8.25. Everybody was shocked and my coach ran to the judges to investigate! The judges were stubborn poops who wouldn't change my score which kinda sucked.

Next was Beam.  We took our grips off and immediately started beam warmups.  Brenna warmed up first, she fell in every single skill she did.  I warmed up next, I fell about 4 times.  This was making us nervous.  Brenna got up and did an ok routine with 2 falls.  I went up next, I stuck every skill except for my stupid cartwheel. 8.625.  After me, Kylie went up.  She fell in her full turn, and fell flat on her face in her dismount.  Tasia got up and nailed her routine. Beam overall was pretty bad for the team.  We had to shake off beam because we still had one more event left.

Last was floor, my fave.  I messed up on some of my dance moves at the beginning, but overall I did a fabulous routine.  I stuck my roundoff back handspring back tuck and my front tuck.  I got a 9.150.

Awards was the best! Kylie, Brenna and Tasia were all competing in the same age division, and I was in a different one.  Kylie rounded up 4 gold medals including one for all around! My scores were...
Vault: 1st
Bars: 6th
Beam: 3rd
Floor: 1st
AA: 3rd

Me on first place!

But the best thing by far was that our team won First Place in team awards!! This meet was by far better than the last and we were all satisfied with our awards! We celebrated by going to Noodles and Company to continue our tradition.

Here are some pictures:

Team Photo Before Bars

The Trophy!!

All our medals

Celebratory Noodles

My Medals

Naughty or Nice Meet!

Hello Friends!

As I previously mentioned other blog posts, I will be blogging about all of my competitions this year.  The first meet this year is called the "Naughty or Nice" meet.  Otherwise known as the Christmas meet.  This meet was held in South Jordan at the other Black Diamond.

*GOOD NEWS!!!!*
I mentioned in my previous post that Kylie and I would not compete as a team this year, but FEAR NOT! My coach bumped Tasia AND Brenna up to gold so that we would have a team this year!!

Current Mood:

Photo Creds: car memes

Now some depressing news...Three days before the meet, Kylie cut her hand really bad in FACS and was not allowed to compete. :(  The gold team was only three girls; Tasia, Brenna and Me.

So any who, back to the meet. Xcel gold (das me) competed Friday, the 5th. Open stretch started at 6:00 and march in started at 6:30. March in is when all the gymnasts walk on to the floor and solute everybody in the crowd while the announcer says the names of our gyms...I know, I know, VERY exciting.  This meet was an "Icebreaker" meet, it was only between a couple of gyms.  Because of this, there were no awards, and we wore our ugly short sleeve competition leos. (and because our new competition leos are on back order and they didn't come in time.)

Our first event was vault.  Both of my warm-ups were awful, because I'm pretty sure my coach did not set the vault right.  I asked her and she just waved her hand and told me to go away.  My vaults both sucked...I got an 8.00.  I'm pretty sure this is what happened: one day at practice, about a year ago,  I asked Tina why the vault was so low in the last competition.  She told me that in competition, she lowers the vault so that we "fly over".  I don't think she understands, however, that this totally screws us up! I'm setting the vault next meet!!

Next, we went to bars.  My warm-ups were ok, but my foot was really hurting after vault. (I injured my foot about a week ago and it still hasn't healed so it really hurt the whole competition). My routine was fine, but not my best. I got an 8.55.

Beam. Now let me tell you something, as if beam couldn't be any worse, in competition, you only get around 30 seconds to warm up your beam routine before you compete...so that sucks.  My beam routine was...interesting...  I wobbled in just about every skill.  I almost fell off after my handstand, my full turn, and my cartwheel, but by some miracle of the lord, I stayed on the beam the whole time. I did stick my dismount though, a front tuck off the end of the beam.  I don't know why but me and Kylie found my beam routine to be the greatest thing ever! We laughed about it for like 10 minutes! Even though it was like the wobbliest routine of my life, I stayed on the beam and that was the most important thing to me! I got an 8.55.

Me wobbling on beam...

After beam, I could breathe a sigh of relief.  Our last event was floor, my fave!  I stuck about every tumbling pass and stayed right with my music! I got deducted though because my round-off double back handspring didn't look very pretty.  My foot was killing me! I scored a 9.00.

Overall, this was not my best meet...my worst one actually. But who cares right?! It was just an Icebreaker meet and the first meet of the season.  It was fun to have Kylie there with me cheering me on even though she wasn't competing.  After the competition, my mom took me and Kylie to Noodles and Company!

Yes...I did draw the noodles and company logo...

Ta Ta,
Maggie

How a Gymnastics Competition Works

Hello Friends,

So as I have previously mentioned, I am going to be blogging about all of my competitions or "meets" this year, so I thought you might want some background info.  A gymnastics competition is referred to as a "meet". Don't ask me why, it just is.  So in my level, we have around 5-6 meets per competition season, plus state meet, and if we qualify, regionals.  Normally, all of our meets are in Utah except for regionals.  Regionals is out of state, last year it was in Arizona, and this year it will be in California!

Every year, around the end of October, we receive a "meet schedule".  It pretty much tells us what meets we are going to that competition season and when.  My meet schedule for this season looks like this...

My competition schedule.

Competition season for gymnastics is usually from December-May.

So now into how a meet works.
There are two parts to a gymnastics meet.  Individual awards and Team awards.  Individual awards are First, Second, Third place for one gymnast.  The top three scores from one team are averaged and entered into team awards.  Team awards are First, Second, Third place for the entire team.  So there's a basic explanation of how awards works.  Now onto some technical stuff…

In gymnastics there are four events, beam, bars, floor and vault. Each gymnast competes every event and receives a score from the judges out of 10.  A gymnasts score starts from 10 and for every mistake they make in their routine, the get deductions.  (I know, super positive right?) On every event there are two judges, they each give the athlete a score out of 10, and then their two scores are averaged to make your final score.  You get one try for your routine on every event, except for vault.  For vault, you get to do two vaults, whichever vault scores higher is the one that stays.  There are five sections for individual awards; bars, beam, floor, vault and all-around.  All around is where you average all of your scores for all four events.  To win first place on all-around is a HUGE deal!

I do a gymnastics program called Xcel.  There are five levels in Xcel; bronze, silver, gold, platinum and diamond.  This competition season,  here's what my team looks like...

Tasia: Silver 
Brenna: silver
Emery: silver
Kylie: gold
Maggie: gold

Since my whole team is silver and gold, we will most likely be going to meets at around the same times.  The only exception will be when Kylie go to meets where Silver and gold do not compete at the same time.  Unfortunately for me and Kylie, this year, Cody has decided that she no longer wants to do gymnastics, it is very sad because Cody is like my sister,  I don't want to talk too much about it in this post, but basically we don't have a gold team this year.  The reason for this is, in order to have a team, you must have at least three gymnasts competing in the same level.  Me and Kylie will not be competing for team awards this year. ☹

So there you have it, a basic rundown of how these competitions will work.  Sorry if this post was kind of boring, but I thought you might need to know some of this stuff for my future posts about competitions.

Me and Cody last year after winning first place
in team awards. (single tear)

Ta Ta,
Maggie