Hello friends,
I had a moment and I wanted to wish you all a very Happy Holiday Season and a Happy New Year!!! I am looking forward to watching the Rose Bowl and cheering on the Maize and Blue! I hope you all are relaxing and enjoying this holiday season - I certainly am!! I hope to see you all once we get started into our season. Take Care!
Bev
Here we are just one week post intersquad and we have only three days to train before a lengthy winter break. It is feeling more and more everyday like the season is upon us. We started our final exams on Friday so we are modifying practice this week to work around tests and reviews etc... I think the team is expecting to do very well this term? I am proud of the way they take care of business with their school work. Academics is a major focal point for our program and I know each athlete is putting in 100% to do the best they can!
Also, last Friday we took the morning and the team members went out to visit several elementary schools. We did this in conjunction with K-grams. They are a student-run group that works with the local schools and tries to keep kids focused on education. They have about 1,000 U of M students that are pen pals with these kids and at the end of each school year they do a big "Kids Fair", where they invite everyone to Crisler Arena. They also sponsor one of our meets each year and try to bring in kids from all over Ann Arbor and Detroit. It is a great organization and I am very proud that we have a partnership with them!! This year's K-grams Night is our first home meet on Jan. 31st. We hope to get out to more schools after the break. Our athletes really enjoy meeting the kids and answering questions. One lucky classroom will even get a chance to win a pizza party with our team after the season. Overall, I think it's a great opportunity for everyone!
Well, I guess that is about it for now. I won't be back in touch with you until after we return from our break in the New Year. I look forward to a relaxing holiday spent with family in North Carolina where I hope it won't be so cold!! Best Wishes to all of you for a Happy Holiday Season!! Go Blue!!!
Bev
Well hello again, I am very happy to report that our intersquad went very well! This was our transition from training to competition and I was pleased and I thought there were a lot of high points to talk about.
It was fantastic to see both Elise Ray and Christine Mantilia back in the line ups again!!! They both did very well. Elise will continue to add difficulty as we go through the season but even her base routines are beautiful and will score well. Chris competed a yurchenko layout full on vault for the first time in her career so she came out with a bang!! Her bar routine is solid as usual and we really need that.
Calli Ryals looks awesome everywhere!! She wants to get the double layout in her floor routine very badly so we will make that a focus. We just don't want to get over anxious and risk an injury. Chelsea is building confidence on bars and she is sooooooo clean. Her beam is solid as well and we hope to be able to use her some on floor this season but we'll see how her knee feels. We don't want to risk loosing her on Bars and beam so we will use her very sparingly on floor.
Lauren always steps it up for meets! We would like to see her add the ½ onto her vault, but her bar routine is outstanding and she is sticking her dismounts like crazy this year! Kara competed with some really sore calf muscles from a fall she took in practice last week. She really wanted to go though and I was impressed with her bar routine. She is normally very consistent on beam and I expect she will be in our line up there consistently.
Becca and Jenny continue to perform at a high level. They have worked so hard and I know when it comes meet time I can always count on them!!! Jenny is adding a full-in as her first pass on floor this year and both of them have got great floor music and choreography that is really fun!!!
Our freshman got there first taste of college gymnastics. Unfortunately Sarrie Rubin did not get to perform Sat. due to a very bruised and swollen heel. She was ready to go on floor and bars and she was very disappointed that she didn't get to compete. Lindsey showed that she is really going to play a key role for us this year. She was tough under pressure and obviously loves to compete! She is really trying to improve her vault but a sprained ankle slowed her down a bit back in Oct. so she is still playing a little bit of catch up in that event.
Carol had a bit of first meet jitters but she really benefited from her first meet experience and we think she will be strong for us this year in vault and beam. We hope with a little more time she will be added to our bar line up as well. Clare preformed on Beam and floor and made both of her routines. I am very proud of Clare and I hope her success at the intersquad will help to propel her in a positive direction over these next few months. I think Clare has an enormous amount of potential and our biggest battle with her is building her confidence. She has the talent to be great!!
All in all I like where we are right now. We still have lots of room
to improve but I think we will start off the season strong! As always
staying healthy will play a very key role in our success this year so
everyone keep your fingers crossed and say a prayer for a healthy season!!!
That's all for now.
Bev
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!! Jim and the kids and I drove to North Carolina to have Thanksgiving with my whole family. 18 of us all together. We had a very good time! The break was nice but now we are back and trying to get everyone ready for intersquad on Sat. The team seems a bit more rested and we hope to have a great week of preparation.
It is still a little hard to predict how we will look this early but we have the potential to develop into a very strong team. We had an intersquad in the gym last week before the break and it went O.K. I think it was a great way to get the team to start thinking about competition. From a mental standpoint competeing a routine is much different than just training it. We needed to begin to change over to that mind set. We will have another mini intersquad on Wed. this week. I hope that our hit percentage for routines will go up from last week. It is always easier the second or third time, once we've gotten into the grove a little.
I have to keep reminding myself that we still have better than a month before we have our first real meet. We will be able to use the intersquad as a measuring stick to see how much work still needs to be done between now and then. It always serves as transition point for us from practice mode to competiton mode. I hope to get to practice in Cliff Keen on Friday so that the freshman will at least get to see it and practice a little before Sat. We hope to see all of you fans and supporters there on Sat. 7:00pm. We need all the support we can get!!!
P.S. Wait until you see Calli's new floor routine!! It is better than ever!!!
Bev
Wow! Thanksgiving is here... well almost. Just two days of practice this week and then we will take a much needed break. We are all feeling like we could use it!!!
Today we will be having an in-gym intersquad. The team doesn't know it yet but these are little surprises we like to pull out of our hat to keep them on their toes. I think they will like it because it will be a change from the normal workout. This will also help them know what they still need to work on before the real thing on Dec. 6th. For most it should be a confidence booster; making them realize they are ready and doing well. For a few it may be a wake up call, making them realize they have some work to do. Better now, though, rather than in Jan.
If this year works like past years, the team will come back from break with a renewed perspective and readiness. Sometimes rest and time away is the best training we can do!!! Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!! Don't eat too much turkey.
Bev
Hi there, it is me again with a few more thoughts to share with you. With just one week left until we break for the Thanksgiving holiday. I am beginning to feel like we will be ready. Everyone has made significant strides and we have been making small changes where needed to ensure that the skills we will be doing are safe to throw in routines this early.
As you may have read already, we are really excited to have signed three new recruits for next year already. I'm limited in what I can say here, but let me tell you that these girls - Katie, Lindsay, and Nellie - will be a tremendous addition to our program and we all look forward to their arrival to Ann Arbor!
I thought this week I might take a little different approach and go through what makes up a beam routine and use one of our team members as an example. (This might be more technical then some fans want to read, but I also know that many of you have wondered how these routines are put together and scored!)
A beam routine must be made up with certain requirements in mind. For example, it must include 3 "A" level skills, 3 "B" level skills, and 2 "C" level skills. You can substitute a higher level skill for an A, B, or C as long as you have at least 8 elements in the routine above C level. The routine must also include a flight series made up of at least two elements that have flight. (Like back handspring layout stepout.) It must also have a full turn, a jump or leap with a 180 degree split of the legs, a movement or series of movements where the body or torso is touching the beam, and a forward or sideward skill. You must have all of this to begin with a 9.5 start value. In order to reach a 10.0 start value you must then include your .5 in bonus. Bonus tenths come from 2 catagories, the first is addative bonus. You get this by combining two or more skills like C plus C combined equals .2 in bonus, D plus an A equals .1, D plus B equals .2, and so on. The other way is by doing D or E level skills. A D skill equals .1 and an E skill equals .2. Many athletes have more than the .5 bonus so that if they miss something their start valuse will not fall below a 10.0. So let me lay out a routine for you...
Let's see... I'll pick Kara Rosella's beam routine. She does a simple kick over mount. This counts as one of her A moves. This also counts as her down on the beam requirement. Then she gets up and does a wolf jump (B) plus a Wolf full (E) she gets .2 addative value for this. Then she sets up for her flight series which is a Back Handspring Layout stepout. She gets a D value for the Layout. After some dance she does a punch front tuck. This is a D value skill and it counts for her forward or sideward move. She then does a straddle jump to cover the 180 degree split requirement. She throws in her full turn a little more dance and then dismounts with a gainer pike full off the end of the beam which gives her another D value skill. So all together she has .7 in bonus and a 10.0 start value for her routine. We try to space the difficulty throughout her routine so it is not all packed at the beginning. The judges look for spacing as well as execution of all the skills. A fall is a .5 deduction, there is no subjectivity on that one but most of the rest of the deductions are fairly subjective. Like bent knees on a flight series can be as little as .05 or as severe as .2 depending on how bent they are in the judges eyes.
I hope this has helped some of our fans out there who where not gymnasts that come to meets and wonder how the judges come up with our scores. There is a little method to all the madness!
Talk to you soon,
Bev
Hello again Friends and Gymnastic fans,
Another week has passed and I continue to see improvements in our team as they are starting to make it through full routines. Lots of room for improvement in execution, mind you, but getting through full routines is the first big step. We will be enlisting the advise of a few of our local judges this week to double check us on our composition requirements etc.... For our athletes this means we are getting close to the intersquad and performing in front of real judges and a real audience.
We are hoping to have almost all of our team competing in the intersquad. Chris Mantilia may not be ready for hard landings on anything but Bars by then, but she is getting closer each day. Elise is looking like she may compete at least watered down routines on all four events (MAYBE)… Calli, Lauren, Kara, Becca, and Jenny are all doing really well! Chelsea is looking better than ever but continues to have problems with a knee that bothered her all last season. We hope she will get to do at least Bars and Beam this year. As for the freshman, they are all doing pretty well. The intersquad will be their first chance to show all of us what they can do!
We will be making the most out of these next two weeks before a nice Thanksgiving break. When we return there is just one week to get back into the swing of things for intersquad and then finals are just around the corner. But I'm getting ahead of myself here so I'll be back in touch soon with more of the inside scoop!! Until then take care!!
Bev
Hello and welcome to "Bev's Briefing!”
This is just one of a plethora of new features this year on our fantastic UMgym.com Michigan Gymnastics website. I hope to keep our fans and supporters up-to-date with the inside scoop about the team’s progress during the season with these weekly postings. Also, feel free to ask me questions through our Question of the Week and I’ll try my best to address your inquiries. I hope all of us together can grow the gymnastics family here at Michigan.
Allow me to first back up and tell you that it has been a good summer! As you know we had a few athletes out last season, and for them the summer was a time for healing and rehab. I know everyone wants to know, "How is Elise?" Well, I am happy to report that her surgery was a success and her rehab has been coming along very nicely. I hope we will see in action on at least an event or two by the intersquad. More about her later...
On another note, Chris Mantilia is also coming back strong from an ACL surgery she had last season. I look for Chris to be a factor for us this year on Bars and hopefully vault as well. For the rest of the team, the summer was relaxed and a lot of them took a few classes here during spring term and trained in our beautiful new facility.
In Sept. we got a chance to see our new freshman in a Michigan uniform for the first time! Lindsey, Sarrie, Carol, and Clare have made great additions to our team. All four bring a lot to the table for us and we look forward to watching their development throughout the season. A sprained ankle set Lindsey back a few weeks in Oct. but she is almost back to full speed and we are anticipating great things from her this season.
Our pre-season workouts were awesome but tough!! We committed the first 6 weeks of our training largely to conditioning. Under the direction of our strength staff (Andre Bell-Watkins and Jim Plocki) we trained both aerobically and anaerobicly and I feel we are in the best shape we have ever been in to start out a year. We stayed with basics longer than normal and I feel that is helping us now when we are starting to make the push for routines.
Mid Oct. thru about Thanksgiving is probably the hardest time for us every year. We have been training hard for about three months and yet the season still seems far away. Put mid-terms on top of that and WOW, it is a lot to be dealing with! The team has done very well at keeping their chins up and working hard through sore muscles and tired minds and bodies. But the light is shining at the end of the tunnel and soon we will be starting our competition season. Our trainer Lisa is working as hard as the athletes right now in keeping up with all of our treatments.
The girls understand how important it is to take care of their bodies now so little things do not flare up into big problems later. We are excited to see the intersquad coming and it is giving all of us the extra energy we need to make the final push to be ready!!!
Bev