Passion for the Pride

March 2, 2013

The final meet of the regular season is something to look forward to. It marks the beginning of the end of a long competition season. It is also the last meet before ECAC’s and is the point of the season where we hope to be peaking with team and individual scores.

Our final meet of the regular season was scheduled at West Chester State in West Chester, PA. A casual 5 hour drive, we started out early Saturday morning and arrived at our hotel in the afternoon. We took a few minutes to settle in and then headed over to the gym with the meet starting at 6pm. Generally, we don’t travel and compete on the same day, but since the competition was in the evening it was the selected order of events. Not being used to walking into the gym on stiff legs and cramped muscles, the girls had an interesting experience adjusting to the circumstances.

The meet was a quad meet with host team West Chester, SCSU and RIC with a gymnast from Wilson College tagging onto RIC’s rotation. We began the meet looking forward to finishing off the regular season with a strong performance and confident attitudes. The freshmen class started us off right with a word of the week: Meow. I’m pretty sure we were all thoroughly confused as to how this word was supposed to be motivational… but the girls laughed off their joke word and produced their real word of the meet; Passion. This word reminded us why we all are still doing gymnastics after all these years of dedication to the sport. We all love the sport, no matter how tough it gets and whether we realize it or not, gymnastics is one of our passions in life. Without passion, we wouldn’t have the motivation to give it 100% and be satisfied whether we win or lose.

We started off the meet on bars with a strong performance, counting only one fall. On beam, we had consistent and confident routines by Nikki, Keelin and Lauren to start off the rotation, but lost a little focus at the end of the rotation to count 3 falls. Floor turned out to be a challenging event due to some trouble adjusting to the different timing of the mats. Although we struggled with some landings, we pulled it together at the end to finish up with some good performances. We finished the meet on vault with one of our better performances. Jen had a highlight performance by filling in for Abby who had to pull out of line up due to injury. Jen stuck her vault after performing for the first time in line up!

Overall, we didn’t have our best performance with a team score of 182.9. We had some struggles with injuries throughout the competition and a sense that we were tired after a long bus ride and possibly overwhelmed by finishing up the long regular season. However, a positive aspect of the meet was the constructive attitudes and encouraging cheers the team maintained throughout the meet. Although we didn’t do our best overall, we didn’t become discouraged by the outcome, and on the contrary came away realizing we could do so much better.

Beginning the practice week before ECAC’s on March 10^th, we’re hoping to rejuvenate and regain energy to approach the weekend confidently and with renewed excitement. We have no doubts in our mind that we can qualify for Nationals in the top 3 teams. We just need to stick together and tap into our potential. By doing that, we’ll reach our goal of peaking at ECAC’s and making it to Nationals. Hope to see you there!

Brittany

Trusting each other and ourselves

 

February 2

Coming off of a strong final home competition the previous weekend, we were excited to carry on our drive at Ithaca College in upstate NY. We were competing against SUNY Cortland and home team Ithaca College. Going up against two other teams in our region gives us the opportunity to see how our routines compare and how we compete against the opponents we will eventually be facing at ECAC’s.

One of the highlights of the meet that set the mood for a positive and motivated atmosphere was the arrival of our “fans of the week” to the meet. Being a solid 5 hour drive, Ithaca NY isn’t exactly a hot spot destination for our families and friends to travel to watch us compete. Nonetheless, we always have those few dedicated supporters and fans from the area who come to support us. At this meet, we were surprised and thrilled to see our strength and conditioning coach Greg walk into the gym with four of our assistant strength coaches. They had made the five hour road trip to watch us compete! Talk about dedication! Needless to say we were excited to have a fan section in the crowd and thankful for their support and all the parents, family and friends who also attended.

To start off the meet, the junior class introduced the word “Trust” to our rope. The addition of this word emphasized the importance of trusting in our team mates, their abilities and support, as well as believing in the strength of our own skills and routines. Our competition began on beam, and yielded our best performance on the event this season! Counting more hit routines than falls on the beam is always an achievement. Moving onto floor, we saw a lot of improvement in presentation and dance. But we also noticed room for progress in areas such as going out of bounds and cleaning up landings.

On vault we also had improvement in aggressive entries, but definitely saw need for clean up in landings and distance of our vaults. We finished up the competition on bars, delivering one of our most confident performances of the season. Coming away from the event, we were happy with our routines, but knew we always had areas to work on.

Finishing up with our last event, we knew we had done well as a team. The final score tallied a 183.8, our highest of the season, and enough to come in second to Cortland who had an impressive showing on their strongest events of floor and vault. Overall, we were very excited about our success! Coming away from the meet, I couldn’t contain my excitement about the steps we had made toward achieving our goal of improving our team score throughout the season and working on our mental toughness and team cohesion. I am so proud of the SC ladies and couldn’t be more thrilled as a team captain to be working with each and every one of them!

Brittany

We believe!

As we near the end of the regular season, there comes a point when we begin to realize the hard work we’ve put into the season by the promising results we get to experience. With ECAC’s looming in the distance, the team is learning how to settle into their routines and perform with confidence and assurance in their ability.

On February 24^th, we traveled to SCSU for our second to last meet of the regular season. Following our make-up this past Monday, we were excited to build upon our success and demonstrate our growing confidence. We added the word “Believe” to our rope. This word was chosen to represent the confidence that we need to have in ourselves and in our team mates in order to achieve our ultimate goal of building on our team score and qualifying for nationals at ECAC’s.

Starting on beam, we posted some big scores with solid performances by Lauren and Nikki. Although we also counted some falls, the routine’s overall possessed a more confident quality and it was one of our stronger beam performances. On floor we hit 6 for 6 routines! This demonstrates the distance we’ve come in being aggressive in our tumbling passes and cleaning up our dance and landings. Jen had one of her best routines of the season and Annmarie returned to floor showing off her double back!

On vault, the team had to adjust to a different vault setting that isn’t used at practice and most competitions. The girls kept their focus and were able to pull off a great performance! Kristin brought in the top score of the day with a huge front handspring front flip vault! Going into our final event on bars, we knew we were doing pretty well as a team, but we were not aware of our overall team score. Our goal on bars was to be aggressive and hit our handstands. Anchoring the team with two huge routines was Lauren and Rachel M. The final team scores were announced at the conclusion of the meet and the team had tallied a 184.5; our highest score of the season!

I don’t think we realized we were doing so well in the midst of the competition. In retrospect, the success of the meet was due to the contagious positive attitude the entire team displayed. We showed immense improvement in demonstrating confidence in our routines and supporting every team mate by staying positive no matter the outcome. We’re excited to finish our regular season at West Chester  in PA next weekend.

Brittany

 

Senior Day

One unique aspect of gymnastics that isn’t typically a part of most other sports is the feature of performance. Every routine on each apparatus is composed of impressive and difficult skills that must be executed with graceful yet powerful technique. This is performance, and this is what the team focused on at our third meet of the season on January 27^th.

In our home arena, the team was excited to show off their routines and perform to the best of our ability. The seniors were especially excited to be competing for the final performance of their gymnastics careers in front of a home crowd. It was sad for Annmarie and I to see our home meet season come to an end and the presentations made by juniors Keelin, Jen and Sarah P. helped us remember the amazing four years we’ve had at Springfield.

We added the word “perform” to our rope at this meet in order to remind us of the importance of presenting our routines to the crowd and showing off our skills with confidence in order to impress the judges. Competing against Ithaca College, the team was excited to see what we could accomplish. Although we counted a few falls on bars and beam, we finished strong with a big floor performance. Feeding off the cheers from the crowd the girls performed their routines with smiles and strong presentation! Anchoring the floor line up were the seniors. It was emotional for me, walking onto the floor, dancing to the music and completing my final pass and saluting to the judges. Walking off the floor I was thrilled to have made it this far in my gymnastics career, but also sad to realize it was coming to an end.

The meet ended in a close finish with our team score edging out Ithaca by a mere few tenths of a point. It was amazing to be able to finish off the home meet season with a win! We’re hoping to continue our success as we travel to Ithaca College next weekend.

Brittany

Courage and Perseverance

February 16

In the entirety of the three seasons I have competed at Springfield College, I have never experienced or heard of a canceled meet, a makeup meet, or two separate meets occurring in one weekend. Well, this past weekend changed all that.

Due to the blizzard that dumped a casual few feet of snow on New England the previous weekend, our meet that was supposed to be at Brown University on February 10^th was cancelled. The unexpected free weekend gave the team a surprise two days off to relax and rest. However, the cancellation also meant a loss of team and individual scores that would have been added to our national rankings and increased our chances of qualifying for nationals at the end of the season. In order to adjust to the loss of scores, Coach Raymond worked with Rhode Island College to schedule a makeup meet in order to replace some of the scores. The only available time for a makeup meet was on President’s Day, February 18^th, two days after a competition at Yale on Saturday.

With a busy weekend in our prospects, we worked hard to physically and mentally prepare ourselves to be ready for the upcoming challenges and opportunity to improve our scores.

Our competition at Yale took place on Saturday February 16 and proved to be a tough competition. We were facing DI and DII teams including Yale, Bridgeport University, and West Chester State.  The competition was exciting with amazing gymnastics to watch. The sophomore class helped us gain a perspective for the competition by adding the word “courage” to our rope. In the face of some intimidating competition, this word helped remind us of the importance of pushing forward no matter the obstacles or struggles.

Throughout the day, we encountered a few obstacles and tough events, but we pushed onward and ended up getting the third best team score of the season so far. Although it wasn’t our best competition, we fought in our routines and addressed some teamwork issues in order to continue improving our team performance.

February 18

Two days after our Yale competition, we found ourselves setting up our equipment in Blake Arena for our surprise third home meet of the season. Already tired from our meet at Yale on Saturday, we rallied our spirits and strength to put in our best effort for the makeup dual meet with RIC.

The seniors added the word “Perseverance” to our rope, hoping to encourage the girls to strive for something deeper and keep pushing for our best even when the going gets tough. Taking this message to heart, the SC ladies worked hard to put in a strong effort. Compared to Saturday where we struggled with team spirit, the girls rallied to produce loud cheers for the team and showed amazing support for every member of the team, no matter the outcome of the routine. This attitude change truly made the competition a fun one and helped produce our second highest score of the season; 183.425.

I was truly proud to see our team pull through a challenging situation and come out on top. Each of these girls are remarkable and we have so much potential that is waiting to peak when we need it at ECAC’s. I’m looking forward to finishing off the regular season with these ladies!

Brittany

Striving Onward

 “The day you take complete responsibility for yourself, the day you stop making any excuses, that’s the day you start to the top.”
-O.J. Simpson

The first away meet of the season is always a unique experience. Whether getting used to competing after a long bus ride, sleeping on an unfamiliar hotel bed, or adjusting to the home team’s gymnastics equipment, the first away meet can be challenging. Our most recent competition at the school of Suny Brockport proved to be just such a tough meet.

Entering the competition, the team was prepared with the mindset to improve upon our performance and team score from our previous home meet. We also began the meet with a “word of the day” and a quote to help us focus for the competition. Annmarie and I chose the word Strive and the quote located at the beginning of this post to share with the rest of the team. We chose Strive to motivate everyone to put their best effort into preparing mentally and physically now, in order to achieve our goal of peaking at the end of season.

From the very start of warm-ups and competition, we faced several tough situations that unfortunately are associated with the challenging away meets. Adjusting to new equipment, tough judging, and an unfamiliar crowd, the team recognized the obstacles while trying to maintain a positive and focused outlook. Overall, the team counted several falls on bars, vault and beam, as well as struggled with landing deductions on floor. However, amidst all these disappointments, I am very proud to say the team did not appear to “fold” under the pressure. Although collectively we were not happy with our performance, after each event, we rallied our spirits and didn’t let negative outcomes keep us from striving onward.

Our team score did take a hard hit with about a 5 point decrease from our previous meet, but we also had success in terms of overall performance and mentality. As I looked around at the faces of the girls during our final rotation on balance beam, everyone appeared to be focused intently on their teammates as they performed their last routine of the competition. Refusing to be distracted by Brockport’s competing routines on floor, the SC girls maintained team support despite the disappointing results of the meet.

As we headed back to Springfield at the end of the day, we had an optimistic ride home with an extended sing-a-long to our favorite 1990’s music and boy band tunes. We even had an inspiration to begin a team a cappella group! But we decided it would be in our best interest (and probably everyone else’s) to save our musical ambitions for private settings. However, we returned to school and practice with a renewed drive to work hard to achieve our goals and prepare for our next meet. If we came away from Brockport with anything, it was determination to work hard and strive for the success we want in order to peak at the end of our season. And we’re certainly not letting a few disappointments hold us back!

-Brittany

Tumble For Teal – Kicking off the Season

You can never fully estimate how people will react to competition nerves until you get the first meet of the season over with. For the Springfield College women’s gymnastics team, we confronted our nerves at our season opener on January 13th in Blake Arena in our annual Tumble for Teal Meet.

Although the team has been working exceptionally hard during intercession with our two-a-day practices, the first meet always seems to creep up a little too quickly. Nonetheless, I was very excited to see how the team would perform and respond to the pressure of our first meet.

We began that day focusing on several team goals we had set earlier that week. First of all, we wanted to have a solid start to the season. Although that seems like an ambiguous goal, we wanted to achieve a team score that was a solid baseline to improve upon, increasing our team score with every consecutive competition. A team score in the low 180’s would have been a good place to start. And we accomplished just that with a 182.85! (not to mention this was the third highest team score among Division III teams in the nation).  

We also carried on team goals at this meet that we implement during every season. These include staying in the bubble (focusing on our team and not the competition), “park it” (being able to move on from an event and not letting it affect the rest of the meet), and “hold the rope” (supporting every teammate throughout the meet no matter what happens, and trusting every team member to do the same for us).

To sum up the competition based on our goals; it was a success! Overall, we had a fabulous start to our season, with strong routines on every event. Although there was definitely evidence of some nerves and pressure, the team did very well to keep their composure and stay focused. We definitely have some work to do, but we have shown that we’re ready to compete and have worked hard to prepare for the season and are looking forward to improving.

I would have to say the outstanding accomplishment of the meet was an amazing bar performance! Putting up 7 routines and counting 1 fall was a huge deal and it was the first time in a VERY long time that our bars event score has been higher then vault.  In fact, our performance on bars has us currently ranks as the top score in all of Division III.  No big deal.

The other events went well, but were also a little shaky, which is to be expected for the first competition. We counted several falls on beam, and lots of landing steps on floor. These weaknesses, however, point the team in the direction we need to focus for our next meet.

Overall, this past weekend was a very solid start for our competition season! We also had successful efforts in increasing awareness and raising funds for research on gynecological cancers. We had a great time working with Team Maureen and the alumna’s family, to make the Tumble for Teal meets a success.

 

Another highlight was being able to share the meet with some recent alumni who came to watch the meet and were able to interact with the team afterwards. 

Thanks so much for everyone who attended the meet and made donations to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. We truly appreciate it!

- Brittany