Thank you to all of our dedicated fans who came out to the intersquad on Sunday! You guys are the greatest!!! I hope you all enjoyed the meet and got a glimpse of what I hope will be a great season for us!
My assessment was that barring any unforseen events, we are ready to put up our top six athletes on each event and start this year off with a bang! We were able to give all of our athletes an opportunity to compete and show their stuff Sunday. I think this is very valuable for a number of reasons but it definitely helps the girls know where they still need to improve. For most, the physical skills are there; it is just a matter of learning how to compete under pressure. In our depth positions we had some breaks in otherwise really solid routines that were caused by mental errors. This is very common in our sport. When we train from Sept. to Dec. 90% of what we do is physical in the learning process, but when we get into competition 90% of what we do is mental. The only way to train the mental aspect is to give them experience in competiton. The good news is that with a little more experience I think the mental errors will go away and we will have some strong routines into our 7, 8 & 9 positions. This should allow us to rotate a few more people into and out of line-ups during the year and keep people a little fresher - I hope!
I thought we had a lot of highlights. Without going through each and every routine, I'll just summarize and say that I was very pleased with vault overall. We saw what we expected on Bars and even had a few people hit routines that made us very happy! This is an event we need to improve on in terms of depth and I think we are doing that each day. We had more falls than I would have liked on Beam, but that is the event where pressure takes the biggest toll during competition. We will need to try to simulate some pressure situations in the gym as much as that is possible. That being said, I think we had some really nice beam routines and I am not concerned about us being ready in this event. I really like our floor routines this year and we have increased difficulty on this event more than any other. We hope to be able to keep all of that difficulty in routines but will make decisions based on consistency in practice from here on out. Nice position to be in for us though. We have a number of people who can via for our beam and floor spots in the line up, so there will be some competition in those events. This will help us to stay on top of our game from week to week.
In closing, thanks again for supporting us and I hope everyone has a
safe and enjoyable holiday season! Please make sure you come out to Crisler
on Jan 7th to see the real deal! We are excited to host Nebraska and it
promises to be a great competition!!!
Bev
Well, well, well, here we are back from a much needed Thanksgiving break
and I can't remember when I've been more excited to get a season started!
The team has been doing so well and it is wonderful when a coach hears
the team commenting that they are feeling prepared. That is not to say
that there will not still be some early season jitters, but I
am confident that when Jan 7th rolls around we will be ready. We always
have to cross our fingers and say prayers that we stay healthy that's
for sure, but if we do I think this will be a very good year for us. Our
upperclassmen seem focused and our freshmen have just been wonderful!!
I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday with family and friends! Personally, I had a wonderful break. We went to my sister-in-laws house in Potomac, MD where my husband's whole family got together. It is so hard to get together when people are spread across the country. Jim's (my husband) one brother and his family came all the way from California to be with us. Besides eating to much we had a wonderful time!!
This week we are having our first intersquad in the gym to see how everyone will do under a little bit of pressure in front of a judge? This will help to prepare us for Dec 12th to compete in front of all of you, which is even more pressure than the judges! Ha Ha!! Seriously though, the team loves preforming for our fans and they want to do their best so they do get a lot more nervous at first. I hope we get a great crowd for the intersquad this year! We are having it at Crisler Arena for the first time. We will also be talking to the audience a lot and trying to provide more education about women's gymnastics and scoring etc... So mark your calendars and don't miss it!!
(Speaking of calendars, we have once again produced our team calendar and will be handing them out at the intersquad!!! Yet another reason to make sure you are there!! Our new media guides will also be ready and available as well. Yep, posters too!)
The time will pass very quickly now, with just a few weeks until Christmas break. We will come back on Jan. 1st and then the season is here! Nebraska rolls into town on Jan. 7th to start us off with a bang! They are always a very good team and will make for a great match up.
I will close for now but I'll write back later to let you know how the intersquad went! I am hoping it will a big confidence booster for everyone!!
Take care!
Bev
Another month has past and we continue to get closer to our competition season. I must say I am very pleased with how I feel our preparation is going. Routines are beginning to come together and our difficulty level has increased over last year. From now until after the New Year is always the toughest time. It feels like we have been training for so long yet season still seems far enough away that the adrenaline has not yet kicked in.
Our team this year has been so fun to work with! It really has been a pleasure each day to come to practice and see their smiling faces! They have all been giving 100%. Today is our Halloween tricks for treats day. This is a fun thing we have done every year that just helps to break up the monotony. The girls all have to come to practice in costumes (ones they can work out in). The coaches give fun challenges to the girls and when they accomplish them they get to pick treats out of a big bowl. We have a lot of fun with it!
We have also been working hard on promoting attendance for this season. Thanks to several of our hard working booster club members we were able to take advantage of the two gymnastics tours that came through Detroit the last two months. We went and passed out post cards and schedule cards and posters etc... We are hoping we were able to reach a broader Detroit market of fans who have not been to one of our meets before?? We need everyone's help, so make sure you are talking to all of your friends and getting them to come watch us this year!!
I really want to encourage all of you to come out for the intersquad meet this year. It will be Dec 12th at 2pm at Crisler Arena and we will be taking advantage of the opportunity to give a little bit more insight to the fans about what we do. We are also working towards an even more organized student "super fan" group who we know will bring a lot of energy and excitement to our meets!
We will be bringing judges into practice within the next few weeks to help us get a reality check and make sure all of our routines start from 10.0. I am anxious because I think we are going to get a lot of really good feedback! I guess that is about it for now. I hope to see you all Dec 12th if not before! You are welcome at practice anytime if you are in the neighborhood!
Bev
Hello again to all of our gymnastics fans, friends, and family, it is hard to believe that it is October already! My staff and I were talking yesterday and noted that it is only 10 weeks until the intersquad meet this year. We couldn't believe it!
Well, things around here certainly got off to a busy start. The team arrived back on campus and we had our first recruiting weekend before classes even started. Then we went on to have three of them in a row followed the next weekend by our annual booster club tailgate! I am happy to say that all four weekends went exceptionally well. I am not permitted to say much about recruiting, but the tailgate was awesome. The weather was a bit cooler than the forecaster predicted, but still pleasant. We had a great turnout and it was great to see so many friendly faces, so thank you to all who were able to attend!
Our freshmen are doing well. I think you will be excited when you get to see them in action! Katie Lieberman is going to set a much higher bar for us this year with her vault and tumbling. She is an extremely powerful athlete. I think I could easily walk underneath her vault - that is how much power and height she has off of the horse! Nellie Kippley is also doing extremely well and she will help us a great deal. Lindsay Bourdon is working hard on her rehab from the ankle surgery she had this summer. We hope to be able to get her back in action in the next few months, so we will look for her to come on the scene a little later in the season. Megan Moore is our fourth freshman and she is one of our hardest workers. She came to us from Rochester Hills, MI and I can see her improving everyday! I really think this freshman class will make a big impact on our team in a number of ways this year!!
We also have a transfer student this year who I mentioned before and has the potential to help us in all four events! Her name is Shanna Duggan and wow! have I been impressed so far! She is a beautiful gymnast will plenty of skills. I am really excited to see how she does in competition. We still have time to work on some new things and prepare but the weeks will begin to fly by, so stay posted for more updates on the team this year!!! Go Blue!!!!
Bev
Well I can not believe that another year is getting ready to start! The summer has flown by and I am so excited to get started. I wanted to give you a summary of what has happened this summer.
Most of the team hung around through the Spring term of summer school! It is always a fun and relaxed time in the gym and they have an opportunity to play! In addition to taking classes they came in a couple of times a week and worked on some new skills. This is also there down time so they take advantage of having a social life and just relaxing. Our camp runs the last two weeks of June so most of them worked that for me. They do a really good job and the campers love having them there. After camp ends they all took off for home to spend July and Aug. The big project during this time is finding their new floor music. They have to get it to me to approve and then we get it cut for them. They are using a new choreographer this year so he has been slowly doing a few of the routines. The rest will be done the first week of Sept. when the girls get into town.
Freshman will be moving in on the first of the month. They are all sooooooooooo excited!!! We also have a newcomer to the team this year who transferred from Central Michigan and she will be a senior. Her name is Shanna Duggan and she will be a great addition to our program. We think she can help us in several events this year. She has been here is summer school since July and can't wait until the team gets back in town.
It has been a busy summer with recruiting and Scott, Joanne, and I have all been out and about! I am happy to say that each of us also got to take a nice vacation. Scott went on a sailing trip in the Virgin Islands, Joanne spent some time in Florida with family, and Jim and I met up with my whole family for a week at the Jersey shore!! So it has been busy but we have also had some fun!
Our recruiting efforts continue and we will be bringing in all of the PSA's throughout Sept. Keep your fingers crossed for us as we hope to bring in a great class! Can't say any more about that now but stay posted!! Go Blue!!!
Bev