What's up Centenary gymnastics fans? This is freshman Dorothy Mims with the next gym talk! This week was the Ladies last regular week of classes before prep week then exam week! (Wow, the freshies' first semester here at Centenary has flown by… time does fly when you're having fun!) First of all, thank you to everyone who bought a shirt to support us. We sold over 500 t-shirts!!! Special shout-out to Jenny who sold 91 of them!!
Your Ladies' weekend was focused on positivity: we read a chapter out of our Mind Gym book and had to hone in on what negative thoughts have been bringing us down in gym so that we can switch them to positivity instead! We all chose a word/phrase to be a reminder that brings our focus back when we start having negative thoughts. Following this weekend's practices-which had great energy and featured "Christmas Sock Sunday" to help us get in the holiday spirit-Coach Jackie brought in a guest speaker to replace Monday's conditioning session. The speaker, Reverend Betsy Eaves (pastor at St. Luke's United Methodist Church), asked us to each talk about how we typically respond to/deal with stress, and how we can help each other when we're facing stress. This was such a great opportunity for this time of the year, since we are preparing for our upcoming finals and then competition season once we get back after winter break. It was also cool to see how much of a family our team really is. (Turns out we know each other better than we know ourselves!) It's amazing to be a part of a program run by someone like Coach Jackie. She knows we won't be successful in the gym and on the competition floor unless we know how to do things like staying positive through difficulties and dealing with our own and each other's stress. She also cares about what happens outside of the gym: she gives us tools to help us be successful in school and in life as well! Thank you, Coach Jackie and Betsy Eaves!
As for how practice has been going, those of us who already have what we need for our routines have been pushing for consistency and clean gymnastics, while the rest of us have been working super hard to get the skills we need, and put them together for competition-ready routines! We had a fun warm-up Sunday while wearing our Christmas socks: we did relay races led by our coaches, including 3-legged and back-tuck sticking races! Individually, Delia has been making great progress on her release move on bars and is SO close to catching it on the competition set of bars! (Also, her birthday was Saturday-she's no longer a teen! Happy birthday, Dee!!) Jenny put her new bar dismount onto mats this week and Tavia did her dismount on the comp set-both of them look INCREDIBLE! Jenny and Mackenzie have been practicing their impressive front tuck beam mount, and Mackenzie, Natalie, Jerrica, and I all put a new tumbling pass(es) out on the floor this week! The list could go on, but the last thing I'll mention is Navia and Si~Si's progress on their new vaults: Navia tried her front handspring pike vault and Si~Si landed her handspring front vault on higher mats and is now moving her Yurchenko half-on-front up to mats!
We are very excited for this weekend, when we get to set up our beam & bars in the Gold Dome to practice on that equipment! It will be the freshmen's first time doing gymnastics in our competition arena, and a great way to get us hyped and give our minds a little break from thinking about/studying for our finals next week! Keep us in your thoughts/prayers as we study hard for our exams, and tune in to next week's gym talk to see how prep week and practice in the Gold Dome went.
Happy Holidays!
Dorothy
