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
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.
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 ...
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.
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
