It's confusing, I know, but Olivia competes in two totally separate sports under the heading of USA Gymnastics.  So far, we've kept you updated on her accomplishments in Trampoline and Tumbling (T&T), because it's usually more exciting with it's national travel and competition at the national level.  However, her main passion, and main sport, really, the one she spends an average of 23.5 hours a week in the gym practicing, is artistic gymnastics - vault, bars, beam, floor - the stuff you generally think of when someone says "gymnastics".  The two sports are structured so differently - in artistic gymnastics, at least for the compulsory levels (4-6), the end of the line is State Championships.  The road to States starts at the local preliminary meets, where you must receive a qualifying score for Sectionals - the score changes annually - don't ask me the mechanics of that.  Olivia scored well above the qualifying score at every prelim, but was definitely not hitting personal best, so she started to put in some visible effort at practice.  The payoff began to show at Sectionals, where she not only took a 1st on beam with a 9.6 over Southern CA's best athletes, but had a respectable showing in the other 3 events + all around; hitting her qualifying score for State by a good margin.  Which brings us to yesterdays Level 6 State Championships. More...

Olivia was in the paper again this week.  You can check it out in e-paper form, not sure how long the link will last but we have included it (just the important pages) in this post in PDF format as well.  If you want the entire PDF let us know, we can send it over to you. More...

July seems like a million years ago right now, especially as we just started Olivia's artistic season, but we just got the professional shots from JO's in Kansas City, so we thought we'd put them up for you all to enjoy.  There's no way we could get great shots like these, even with Red Nan's fancy camera, so it's nice to have some action photos. More...

Olivia was in the paper this week.  You can check it out in e-paper form, not sure how long the link will last but we have included it (just the important pages) in this post in PDF format as well.  If you want the entire PDF let us know, we can send it over to you. More...

Here are some Pictures from the first week of school.  Enjoy...  More...

We were on the road with gymnastics again this past week for T&T Jr. Olympic Nationals in Kansas City, MO.  After Tulsa, Sacramento and Bakersfield, KC was a pleasant surprise.  The week started out with the final Olympic trials for men's trampoline on Monday and Tuesday, where 2 of the boys from our team took 2nd (actually, a controversial tie for 1st, which was broken in the other guy's favor) and 3rd.  We arrived on Wednesday, and our luggage followed slowly behind on Thursday - grrrr.  Be wary when the pilot mysteriously says he's solved the plane's weight issues.  Thursday was spent touring the Union Station area, greeting arriving families and trying to organize a small party of 30 for dinner reservations.  We ended up at Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbecue, which was a surprise with it's linen napkins, but delicious none the less.  The girls spent the rest of the evening buzzing from floor to floor signing door posters and crashing the big kids' dance party.  Friday, July 4th, was open training, the craziness of Grand March In (1,600 competitors, 37 states and 191 gyms!), Liv's Jump Start exhibition and, of course, fire works.  In addition to the gazillions of little shows we saw all along the river, we were front and center for the '08 Riverfest show, which was spectacular.  Another free day on Saturday was spent watching friends compete in the am, a couple hours in the Plaza area, and a family dinner at Arthur Bryant's BBQ, where we finally, after a few reprimands, managed to follow all ordering protocol and get our 3 giant platters of meat and french fries. More...

Trampoline and Tumbling State Meet - Bakersfield, CA

We spent this past weekend in lovely Bakersfield, CA, with Olivia's gymnastics team.  Her main sport is traditional artistic gymnastics (bars, beam, vault, floor), but her coach thinks the girls get some value out of competing trampoline and tumbling (T&T) during their off season.  There isn't a lot of pressure on the girls during this season, and they only practice the events literally minutes out of their 18 hour a week practice schedule, but they all did fantastic.  Most qualified in all three events (trampoline, tumbling and double-mini) for JO Nationals in Kansas City, MO, in July.  Our Livie Lu had a good meet.  She's the 1st place Level 5 9-10 year old State Tumbling Champion, 2nd place double-mini (one judge gave her a 9.9 on her first pass - wow), and 3rd place trampoline.  Her team mates took the 1st place spots in DM and tramp, so her gym did really well.  As usual, when the meet was over and we all wanted to congratulate her and revel in the moment, she had thoughts of only one thing - food.  Oh well, I'm actually grateful it all doesn't go to her head. More...

2008 National Jump Start Testing - Tulsa, OK

Olivia qualified at the state level to attend JumpStart testing at the national level, which was this past January in Tulsa, OK.  JumpStart is a a special program designed to identify future elite athletes, specifically in trampoline and tumbling, which is not even her primary sport, so when her coach first invited her to train for the program, I figured yeah right, whatever.  However, Olivia's Red Nan happened to take her to gym on the night when the official invitations were handed out, and made promises to her that she could do the program and Nan would take her to Tulsa if she qualified.  I wasn't thrilled to add a 5th night to her practice schedule, but Olivia was enthusiastic, and how could I say no to that? More...