I’m back from Day 1 of the Juniors competition at the US Gymnastics Championships. Before I head back to the arena for the Seniors at 7pm, here are some notes from this afternoon.
Gymnast of the Afternoon – Jordyn Wieber, Gedderts Gymnastics. I knew of her from watching some CN8 coverage of meets during the years, and she did not dissapoint. She hit everything, and took the lead over Samantha Shapiro on rotation four. Previous, she had been .100 of a point behind Shapiro during the whole meet. Her and Shapiro’s skills were far and above the class of the field, with start values and scores well above the other girls.
Scrunchie Girl of the Afternoon – This is a toughie – both Melissa Metcalf (Desert Devils) and Sophina DeJesus (Precision) were fun to watch. DeJesus had the best floor exercise music EVER (a collection of marching band music), and was a rock during the first half of her beam routine. She did finish that routine with a few bobbles, but she was impressive. Metcalf was impressive on bars, and showed a ton of effort on her beam routine. She also had the best opening floor exercise pass of the meet. Both caught my eye has gymnasts to watch.
Other highlights of the afternoon included Hallie Mossett’s (All Olympia) beam mount (reminiscent of Amy Chow, my favourite gymnast when I was growing up) and Rebecca Clark’s beam and floor routines. She is nipping at a few heels here and has a presence and command beyond her years.
All of the leotards were quite nice – there was a lime green sighting, but it was used as a compliment, not a main color. I didn’t care for the Parkettes leotartds (a red and gold fireburst type of design), but they were not horrendous.
Also, many of the gymnasts went out of bounds on floor – I only saw two gymnasts not go out of bounds. I chalk this up to excitement and nerves. Otherwise, it was a very clean competition, and quite fun to watch.
I’ll be back later with a report after the Senior Day 1 competition.