Author: Ruth

Very full day — spelling bee, gymnastics meet, and skating exhibition, all in one day.  Crazy, but efficient.

Jenya once again competed in the Western PA Spelling Bee.  She went into it with two goals: do better than last year, and make it to the finals.  She got one, but not the other.  She was eliminated in the fourth round of the semi-finals, which was one round away from making finals.  So close!  But "echt" tripped her up.  Still, she was a much more serious contender this year, and she did a great job.

De had her last gymnastics meet of the season, at Once Upon a Time.  She did a great job.  Seventh all-around, fourth on beam, fourth on bars.  The meet was fairytale-themed, and instead of trophies, the top 7 all-around received princess snowglobes.  De just barely squeaked in to get one, and she loves it!  Her gymnastics has improved so much this season, also, it's lovely to see.

De's Level 3 Beam, 9.2 (4th place)

 

De's Level 3 Bars, 8.6 (4th place)

 

De's Level 3 Floor, 8.7 (8th place)

 

Finally, all three girls skated with their synchro teams in exhibitions at Shamrock Skate.  The Junior Blades' (Jenya and Ana) last-ever performance of "Shake, Senora" was probably their best to date.  The Little Blades (De) had several new members skating the routine for the first time, so it was a bit rocky, but they managed well and had fun.

 

 

Jenya's biggest house of cards so far. It collapsed literally the instant after I snapped the picture.  The girls love building these, almost as much as Lunn does.

The girls had a synchro competition at Hershey this past weekend.  We went down a day early, and spent Thursday night near Liberty Ski Resort.  We had dinner at a lovely 250 year old inn, and then spent Friday morning skiing at Liberty with the girls' friend Ben and his family. 

The girls, of course, had never been skiing before, and it's been about 20 years since I last went, but it came back to me surprisingly easily, and the girls picked it up quite fast.  We all had a lot of fun.  It was about 50 degrees, with all manmade snow (more slushy ice, actually), but it was wonderful skiing in the nice warm weather.

Then we went on to Hershey, for the Reflections Synchro competition.  All 3 girls skated, Jenya and Ana with Junior Blades, and De with Little Blades.  Hershey has a nice big rink, and they enjoyed skating in there, and watching the other teams as well.

Here's De with the Little Blades, in their very first competition:

 

And Jenya and Ana with Junior Blades:

 

De had another gymnastics meet this weekend, the Tiki Classic in Beaver Falls.  It was much larger than the last one, with something like 30 girls in her level and age group.  She did very well, 3 of her 4 scores were personal bests.  She got 8th place all-around; 5th on bars (8.65), 9th on beam (8.8), scored 8.7 on floor and 8.3 on vault.

De's Bars, 8.65, 5th place:

 

 

De's Beam, 8.8, 9th place:

 

De's Floor, 8.7:

 

De's vault, 8.3:

 

Jenya entered a math contest and got the answer correct.  Can you?

"Ten consecutive even integers have a sum of 70 and a product of 0.  Determine the product of the greatest and least even integer in this set of ten integers."

 

Ana and Jenya skated this weekend at Keystone State Games in York, PA.  Both Ana and I had a fairly nasty head cold the entire time, but Ana did a wonderful job of skating through it and did quite well.

Here's Ana's Limited Beginner CTT Free Skate, she got 2nd free skate, 3rd compulsory:

 

And Jenya's Pre-Preliminary CTT Free Skate, she got 3rd Free Skate, 4th  compulsory:

 

De's gymnastics meet this weekend (Cloud 9.0 Invitational) went great! She got 1st place on floor (8.6), 2nd on beam (8.5), 3rd on bars (7.75), 3rd on vault (9.0), and 2nd all-around. She was ecstatic! She did a wonderful job, too. Really cool.

De's Beam routine:

 

and De's Floor routine:

 

Alexey Mishin, coach of Plushenko (2nd in last year’s olympics) and other top-tier skaters, visited RMU today. Jenya got a chance to participate in a group lesson with him, with two other girls who are also working on their axels. Very cool!

Picture shows Mishin (in the red jacket), plus Igor and Crystal (the girls’ normal coaches), and Talia, Tory and Jenya.

A very long, but very nice day today at the USFSA figure skating competition in Columbus, OH.  The girls had a great time and did a wonderful job. 

Jenya tied for 1st on her compulsory and got 3rd on her program, Ana got 3rd on her program and 4th on her compulsory, and De got 1st place on her program.  Their coach Crystal very kindly came all the way to Columbus just for them, and I think her being there helped them significantly in their skating.  It was a lovely competition, too — small, but comfortable and well-run.

For anyone keeping track, Jenya and Ana have moved up from ISI (the recreational/intro skating path) to USFSA (the path that can eventually lead to nationals/olympics/etc).  This is very cool, but leads to confusing terminology.  In very broad terms, skaters go thru the whole ISI progression from Pre-Alpha to Delta, or the Basic Skills progression from Basic 1 to Basic 8, and only then can they start in USFSA in something like Limited Beginner Test Track.  Which means you have to be a pretty good skater and have a year or two of competition experience before you can achieve the status of beginner…  

De's Basic 2 program – 1st place out of 3:

 

Ana's Limited Beginner Test Track – 3rd place out of 6:

 

Jenya's Beginner Test Track – 3rd place out of 9:

 

The last event of our super-busy weekend — De's first real gymnastics meet.  She competed level 3, and had a wonderful time. 

Here is her bar routine, she scored an 8.0 on this even with the spot (they do an automatic deduction if the coach touches them), so she was very happy about that.

 

And her beam routine

 

And her floor routine

 

And of course vault