State Tournament Season Part 2

After successfully threading the needle on the drive home from Iowa, Tom and I went into high gear to get ready to go to Kay's state gymnastics meet at the U.  It was REALLY snowing now and we needed to lead about an hour earlier than normal.

In a usual Loudamericans move, Tom had decided (finally given in) to paint Kay's room. The theory being, I was out of town and it would reduce my stress.  As you can imagine, all the best laid plans of mice and men.  Kay was so worked up Friday and Saturday that she had a ton of manic energy and couldn't focus on anything more than 2 minutes. Making it VERY difficult to paint a room. At one point, she grabbed a brush and told Tom "you can leave now, I've got this ...". Yea. Right.

She can be very organized and even had a color coded list of her schedule for the day ...

Tom finally got her on the bus (yes, the school is required to send a bus, even if its just one athlete but she invited her coach, captain and team manager to ride with her) and he was able to finish her room.

Now it was snowing really hard, Billy was crashing from his meet and Jimmy was just finishing up homework and not interested in leaving a warm house for a cold snowy drive to the U.

Tom and I headed off. 

We got there in time to see her warm and up get a good spot in the bleachers. Her friends, both from high school and club, all came streaming in a few minutes later.  We were able to sit with our gymnastics parents friends and it was a really cool meet and facility. Kay has wanted to compete at the U forever and this was a bit of a dream come true.

There were 44 girls competing from across the state with 24 of them competing in all around. Kay was only 1 of 4 freshman that competed.  Pretty damn impressive!

The other gymnasts were amazing. One girl even got a 9.9 on the vault and the crowd went nuts!  In fact, of the top 3 finishers, NONE of them had a score of less than 9.5,  This was some killer gymnastics and a very competitive crowd.

It was super fun to see all the high schools from across the state cheering on their athletes. And, most surprising, the best girls werent necessarily from the Twin Cities. In fact, the posted a fun fact that MN is the #1 state for high school gymnastics - there are 201 teams and 2,796 gymnasts.  Pretty damn impressive that she made it to the top 44 as a freshman. That puts her in the top 1.6% of the state and if we are the #1 state, that (probably) means that she's in the top 5-10% of the nation. Wow!

1st up was bars and she looked good.  Not her best score but close and a nice smooth routine.  8.825

Bars

What we didnt know is that in warms up on the bar, she whacked her foot on the lower bar while practicing her giant and it was bruised. This ends up playing a factor on the beam.

Unfortunately, she slipped off the beam and it looked like it hurt. She got a 8.3 which is her lowest score and I'm sure she was disappointed because beam is her best event.  After the competition, we asked her what happened and she told us about her foot injury on the bars.  She said "I loved the feel of that beam but my foot was numb and when I landed I couldn't feel the beam and slipped off".  Shoot. But, as a true competitor, she hopped back up and finished her routine.  So proud of her in that moment.

Beam

Floor was up next and thats her favorite event. She has such a fun, sassy routine and she NAILED it! Best score of the year - 9.3 and you could see her smile and relax into the routine after her 1st tumbling run.  I just love watching her ...

Floor

She finished up on vault, which is NOT her favorite or her best event.  She did get her best score -  8.9 so that was fun. 

Vault 1

Vault 2

Her final score was 35.325 which was (we think) her 3rd highest score of the season.  

It was a big stage with fierce competition and she held her own. We are so proud of her!!

Love you Kay!

Her fan base

Warming up

Woo Hoo!  Jumbo tron!

Intros - after a bit of a panic, we managed to find her flowers to walk out with

Eyeing up the competitioin 

Amazing!!

In the holding area with her captain (Sydney) Coach (Megan) and Manager (Sophia)

Nailed the landing

State Tournament Season

Its that time of year in Minnesota again, state tournament season and that means road trips, banquets and snow.  Yep, if there is a state tournament, the probability of snow goes up fourfold. Although this usually occurs during state hockey, this year it was state taekwondo and gymnastics.

MN Taekwondo decided NOT to host a state tournament this year. The only problem with that? The only way to qualify for nationals is to compete in a state tournament so ... we had the choice of Iowa this weekend or Wisconsin in March, which directly conflicts with our spring break. Needless to say, we took the Iowa option.  Off to Des Moines we go!!

Billy and I road tripped with Kristin and Esa (our travel buddies) again and managed to be on the road on Friday by 3:30 despite my car breaking down, having to get towed twice and snow night before of 4 inches.  Thankfully Kristin loves to drive so she's our pilot (pun intended, she was a fighter pilot in the army so we are in good hands).

We managed to roll into registration and weigh in around 7pm.  The Iowa tournament organizers are shockingly organized and were ready for the onslaught.  Both Esa and Billy had to get down to their skivvies to make weight (in gender appropriate locker rooms of course) and both came in a hair under the limit. Whew! Even Billy was a bit nervous and finally relented to peeing - magic ticket!  This is good from the perspective that they are then the biggest in their weight class. However, what we learned the next day was disappointing. They HAVE to compete at Nationals at the weight they registered for in State even though Nationals is 5 months later. Seriously, these are kids. They grow. A lot. Urghh...

Still unaware of this knowledge, we headed to the hotel (gorgeous!) and dinner (extremely yummy).  There were warm cookies, free drink coupons, amazing steak and pasta and the friendliest staff.  The DoubleTree in Des Moines really is a great hotel!  Esa even said.. lets eat here for every meal!

After a fun dinner, we headed back up to the room for a post dinner glass of wine, Myth Busters and decompression. Kristin was responsible and dragged Esa to their room after 1 episode of Myth Busters (poop and gummy bears as rocket fuel).  Billy and I were not and got sucked into another episode (old west shoot out and which is more accurate, slow and deliberate aim or rapid fire shots).

Finally it was lights out and a good night sleep.

Saturday we woke up to freezing rain and the threat of Snowstorm Polly to our north. We were watching the weather closely with the hopes that we could compete and get home without getting stranded in Iowa.

When we got the venue we learned that Esa didnt have anyone to compete against, so she just accepted her medal and qualified for nationals. It is disappointing though to be all ready to compete and not get the opportunity.

Billy faired slightly better. He had 1 competitor but the kid had a full 5 inches on him. No idea how that kids made weight.  Billy fought a great defensive match but admittedly could have been more aggressive on offense. Billy was definitely the better sparrer technically and strategically but its hard to get a ton of points (head shots) when the person you are fighting towers over you.  He fought the good fight.  He took 2nd and is headed to nationals.  Billy is such an impressive competitor.

We had rare permission to leave the meet before it was over in an effort to avoid Polly and as we were headed out the door, we learned of the weight class rules for nationals AND learned that - yes indeed - there IS a MN state tournament that got added last minute in Detroit Lakes next weekend.  This is a good news/bad news scenario -  Good news, Billy and Esa have a chance to fight up a weight class and circumvent the weight issue of not being able to fight at nationals.  Bad news, Iowa was a redundant trip, we didnt have to go to ... there was a MN meet. AND, we wouldn't have to go to the MN meet if we had known that they should have fought in a higher weight class in Iowa.  TKD is a serious disaster when it comes to communication, organization and attention to details.  I know I can't change it, I know its never going to change and I'm extremely crabby about it.

The 1st 45 min of the drive home was me bitching about TKD - I'm sure that was fun for Kris.

But, she's a trouper and we were able to thread the needle on the storm. We had sleet most of the way but didnt hit the heavy stuff until we were 30 min from home.  We made it home in record  TKD time at 3:15pm.  Enough time to shower, get organized and turn around to go see Kay compete at state ( thats our next blog).

So, off to Detroit Lakes next weekend.... sigh.

Love you Billy!!


Cute photos though...

warming up

2nd place

sweaty happy silver medal

Here some good footage of Billy's meet ...

Sparring 1
Sparring 2
Sparring 3
Sparring 4
Sparring 5
Sparring 6
Sparring 7
 Sparring 8
Sparring 9

Kays Hopkins High School Gymnastics Legacy

Kay has been kicking some serious ass and taking serious names on the HHS team this year. She made varsity all around as a freshman (huge accomplishment!) and has been working hard. Its paid off in a series of 1st and 2nd places (overall) and some great scores in the upper 80's, lower 90's.  Each team seems to have 1 girl that is knock out good so ... we are really proud of how Kay competed this year, she was right in the mix (as Jimmy would say).

All this hard work culminated in 6AA sectionals last weekend. It was at Minnetonka High School and the meet included: Hopkins, Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, Southwest, Washburn and St Louis Park.   To qualify for state you need to either: 1) be one of the top 3 in all around or... 2) be one of the top 3 for each individual event. Considering Minnetonka and EP are HUGE schools AND all these programs have at least 1 really good gymnast, making it to state isnt a "Give Me".  Kay was going to have to work really hard. Especially as a freshman.

Since we were expressly NOT invited to come see her compete at sectionals (we had negotiated with her that we wouldn't attend away meets and sectionals was technically an away meet - good reminder for our negotiations next year ...) one of the other parents took videos for us and sent us text updates.

Kay did great and had her 2nd best all around score!  We are a little unclear about where she landed from a "placing" perspective but we did find out ...*drum roll ... that she tied for 2nd place all around with a score of 35.42 and was going to state!! Woo Hoo! We were so proud of her!!  In fact, her team took 3rd place overall , their highest placing position in years and she is the only one from her team that made it to state.

And, she got an academic athlete excellence award for a GPA 3.66 - this is crazy because (just the week before) she had 2 F's and a  D.  All missing homework.  Thanks to a lot of encouragement (nagging and threatening) by her dear parents, she managed to get it all in and now has all A's and B's. Go figure. You hand in your homework, you get good grades. Crazy talk, I know. BUT ... she did manage to pull it all together to an amazing showing...

Tied for 2nd on the podium!

I think this was 4th place bars...

The team came over for pizza and to celebrate after the meet

A hungry and good group of girls

Awesome!!

Thats our Kay - hardworking, smart and a procrastinator 

Here are the videos we were able to admire from afar ...

Bars - 9.2 - looked gorgeous!


Vault - 8.775 best of the year!


Floor - 9.075 such a fun routine


Unfortunately, no one got her Beam routine (8.8 score and didnt fall but didnt make her connection). However, she WAS on the Kare11 5 o'clock and 6 o'clock news! They showed a quick high school sports news segment which featured Kay's beam dismount and her team surrounding her with hugs. Our text/voicemail went nuts with friends that saw the segment. Unfortunately, we missed that too and when we watched the 10 o'clock news, they didnt replay it. Tracy did contact Kare11 to see if we can get a copy but... haven't heard back yet. More to come.

Because she made it to state, she's also invited to a banquet to celebrate all the competing gymnasts. She is adamant that she doesnt want to go. We aren't sure what to do. We dont want to force her but we also want her to enjoy and celebrate this big accomplishment. She wants nothing to do with it "sounds boring" "my friends won't be there"  etc...

Not wanting us at meets and not wanting to go to the banquet are probably signs of her anxiety coming out in full force.  Its hard to watch as a parent. She puts so much pressure on herself and has such a hard time enjoying her success.  I struggle with whats the right answer ... I'm sure there isnt one.  We just want to take it minute by minute.

The other big part of going to state, which we haven't told Kay yet is .... she has to ride a bus.  By herself.  They school as a bus ordered to take her to the meet (insurance reasons, we can't take her and drop her off) as well as a bus ordered to take her teammates to go watch her.  We are a little worried about how ballistic she'll go when she realizes that she's on the bus. By herself.  At least they can all ride home together.

Finally, she is begrundginly letting us attend state to watch her.  However, Tracy will be out of town with Billy since HIS state meet is in Iowa this year and ON THE EXACT SAME DAY. Good god. I think she's secretly thrilled that Tracy won't be there and is probably sticking voodoo pins in Tom's doll in the hopes that he'll get sick and not be able to attend.

Ah ... all good fodder for our counseling sessions.   (ours now and hers in the future)

More to come on how she (and Billy) does at state!!

Jimmy Update

The Super Bowl brought many things to Minneapolis and one of them was the Sound Mind Sound Body Combine Experience.

This is basically a recruiting company for the NFL. It was a morning of instruction and how to prepare ones self to become a recruit in the college football area, then what you needed to do to continue into the NFL, it was eye opening. Then the afternoon was forming position teams and one on one drills with NFL trainers and then the regular conditioning test, vertical jump, standing long jump, 40 yard dash and the side to side drill. This is all basic football speak...

We headed downtown for the morning session which was a cluster. These people running the program are not from around here and didn't know how to deal with the snow storm that was happening, so in a panic they started the program early it was to start at 11:30 but they started it at 11:00 and of course all the local wandered in at 11:25 and it was chaos. Kids getting weighed in presenters trying to talk to the crowd while kids are being shuttled in and out so ...yeah a cluster.

The morning session ended and in the midst the storm a few hundred people had to get from downtown town Eden Prairie good luck. Being the safe Minnesotans we took the back roads stopped for lunch and were still the first ones there. Champions Hall is a big indoor sports facility which has an indoor football field. The plan was to do the drills and then break out not groups and do the one on one drills. That didn't happen.

The people in charge of the technology for the tests were late and then their equipment didn't work so the organizers change the events and the one on one's  are first. This was about a 2 hour drill/ training where the different teams, i.e the running backs, the line backers, the wide receivers, the safeties, the quarterbacks and the O-Line and D-line face off against each other.

Jimmy was in the line backer group and they were against the running backs in one drill and the wide receivers in another. He weighed in a 214 lbs and at 6.2. He was pretty good at defending the running backs and keeping them out of the end zone. He got beat deep once or twice by the wide receivers however he managed to catch up with them and keep them from scoring.

Tracy came down late in the day after shuttling Billy around to his TKD duty and was able to see some of the drills. Watch these big O-linemen and D-linemen going at it was scary. One of the kids dislocated his shoulder and this was just for fun!

All the players were not happy when after a 2 hour workout they then had to take the conditioning tests. Jimmy was not happy with his scores but once he heard all the other kids complaining there scores were better than whet they got in this test he felt better. Each kid had a wristband that kept track of their times, jumps movements, etc and at the end of the day the kids would turn these in and get evaluated. By this point Tracy and I were starving so we left Jimmy there to finish up and change and we headed out to eat. We met up with him back home later and had stopped at Chipotle and bought a triple meat and double rice burrito which the clerk was refusing to make for him, he somehow persevered. His final commit on the camp was " I am glad I went, I found out I'm right where I need to be conditioning wise and strength wise"


Drill 1
Drill 2
Drill 3
Drill 4





The Sadie Hawkins Dance is next up for Jimmy. He was invite by Allison a friend of his and of course he said yes. There was a big group of kids going together each had a date but they were going as friends as opposed as "dates".

Jimmy was bound and determined to have the best facial hair at the dance, you can be the judge.

The kids all met at one of the girls house and shockingly we as parents were invited to the picture taking event!
Noah and James were there as well two of Jimmy's long time and close friends as well as Baker, his name is Noah as well but everyone just calls him Baker (which is his last name)
The kids then headed off to a local restaurant for dinner. The dance was in the High School and we were not allowed, by Jimmy, to attend, He had a blast and said it was really fun.

So, Jimmy is having the quintessential high school experience.

Love you!

Jimmy, Baker and Noah

Allison and Jimmy 

The gang

Una and Noah

Cute Couple

Another

And another

James, Jimmy and Noah

Everyone!

Again

Tough

What happens in Vegas...

This week Billy and Tracy had an opportunity to travel to Vegas for the US Open TKD tournament. It was Billy's 1st international tournament and it was NOT without drama getting there, mainly due to registration being a pain in the ass and testing Tracy's patience.

Long story short, it took 8 weeks to register for the event since the genius's at the governing organization decided to change software programs 1/2 way through registration being open and Billy's registration got caught in that mess.  We finally got it straightened out 2 weeks before the event and got his GAL (Global Athletes License) 1 day before they left.  Talk about the nick of time!

Billy is a Bantam weight Cadet (38-41kg, black belt, 12-14 age group, boys).  Basically this means that they can now do head shots. It also means that, at this tournament, there 41 competitors in his age group. From around the world.  Crazy!  So, you could say he's in the top 50 world wide.  Its a huge honor to be invited and overwhelming to know that you are fighting the best of the best but ... Billy took it in stride was only a little nervous, mostly excited and held it together really well.

We landed Sunday night and had tickets to Mat Franco. He's the magician that won Americas Got Talent and he's totally worth the price of admission! It was a great family show, small venue and AMAZING magic. Both Billy and Esa now want to be magicians and we were all blow away. A great intro to Vegas!

On flip side of our 1st day, we couldn't seem to get our room "right". We checked in, dropped our bags, noticed that the room was hot, turned on the A/C and left for dinner and the show. When we came back, 3 hours later, the room as still at 78 degrees and we were dying.  We asked to be moved, packed our gear up and proceeded to be "placed" in 4 MORE ROOMS!  We had more rooms that we had nights reserved!  The 2nd room had a shower facet that literally was streaming water and we couldn't get it to shut off. The 3/4th room was an adjoining room, but one side didnt have a bed and the other only had 1 bed (thats not going to work), the 5/6th room worked. It was another adjoining room with 2 queens a murphy bed, couch and kitchenette.  We had finally found our home for th next 3 nights, after 2 hours of lugging luggage and  it was midnight. We fell into bed exhausted (to the hotels credit, they are undergoing a major renovation and comp'ed our whole stay.  That was nice)

We were up the next morning early to register and weigh in.  That took 3 hours. 1 hour to stand in line to register. 1 hour to stand and line to weigh in and 1 hour where Tracy totally lost it and started crying when she realized that Billy was actually registered for Fly weight not Bantam and he wasnt going to be allowed to fight.  She pleaded, bribed and worried. After going up the ladder 3 times, the woman finally found someone willing to bend the rules and, after paying a hefty fine, Billy was registered in the right weight class.  This only left 2 hours until practice so what did we do?  We headed out to see the Strip!!

We took the monorail and walked up and down the strip. The Vegas girls made Billy and Esa nervous but he was funny when he saw a sign that said "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas".  His comment to that?  "Huh, just like the fishing trip".

Practice went well and we headed out to find dinner and get to bed early.

Tuesday was the "big" day,  We had to get to the competition early (8am) but call time for Billy didnt happen until 11:20, then, it was waiting in holding until 12:30.  With 41 competitors in his class, we figured we were in for a long day.

Asa got called 1st and had 4 kids in her class, she did awesome! Won her 1st round and fought hard in her 2nd round, taking away silver.  Way to go girl! You are a fierce beast!

Billy finally got called and was ready. In the 1st (of 3) rounds in his match, he got hit in the nose and got a Rocky worthy bloody nose.  The blood was streaming down his face and they werent able to stop the bleeding so they stuffed 2 tampons up his nose and off he went into round 2 and 3.  He fought hard, managed to slow the match down (a key skill when the other athlete is hyper aggressive) and even got his 1st head shot points as a black belt.   He didnt win his match but he didnt back down, fought hard, got some points and walked out smiling.  When I asked how he felt he did he said ..."I fought hard and could have done a little better if I could breath and didnt have tampons shoved up my nose....".  Love you Billy.

Part of TKD team etiquette is that you dont leave the tournament until your last team mate competes. For this meet, that was 8:15pm. The kids were melting but I have to admit, the final matches were the best of the best and really fun to watch. His team took home a # of silvers and bronze.  Pretty damn good!

We barely made it to dinner without passing out, and then fell into bed exhausted.

Both Billy and Esa loved the competition and weather but the constant indoor smoking just about drove them crazy.   In order to pass time, we played a game to see how many countries we could spot and get a photo of (see below for photos) we saw ... Honduras, Mexico, Denmark, Australia, Pakistan, Canada, Nicaragua, Baztekzhan, Manila, Puerto Rico, China, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, Malaysia, Columbia, Guatemala, Peru, Taipai, Korea, Japan, Brasil

Here are some fun pictures - Love these guys to death, So proud of you both!!

The dynamic duo

The official photo

A BIG part of TKD is learning to wait

Getting ready to fight

Final prep

Trying to stop a bloody nose

Tampons

The only kid that smiles after being kicked in the face 

Master Lee with Billy

The team!!

Photos of countries

Can you name them all?

So impressive

And the matches - check out his streaming bloody nose and the second face shot he takes, shakes his head and keeps going.  

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4