Kaitlyn's 1st Gymnastics Meet of the 2018 - 2019 season

Kaitlyn participated in her first gymnastics meet of the 2018 - 2019 season on Sunday, 16 December.  The event was named "Christmas on the Chesapeake" and took place at the Baltimore Convention Center.  It was a cold and rainy day so a perfect day to be inside watching the gymnasts perform.  This was Kaitlyn's first competition since her incredible performance at the State meet in May (1st all-around for her age group...State Champ!).  She was on the Excel Bronze team last season and moved up to Excel Silver this year.

Santa stopped by for the holiday event and took pictures with the teams before competition kicked off. 

Warm up.  Kaitlyn always cracks a smile when she sees us watching her :)

Excel Silver being introduced!  The team was split into two due to their size so this is only half of the Excel Silver team.  Kaitlyn is second from the left.

She started the season with her most challenging event...balance beam.  Her performance was excellent (no falls)!  The score was lower than expected and she later told us she forgot to complete one of her skills, which results in a nice point deduction.

She scored an 8.8 on beam.  Good start for the season with room to fine tune.  

Next up was floor, which she normally enjoys.  Her routine isn't too different from last year but she has a few new skills mixed in to make it more challenging.

Hard to read but she scored a 8.45 on floor.

Next up was vault, which she seems to naturally do excellent in.  Two separate clips for her two runs.




Good score on vault, she makes it look easy.

She scored above a 9.0 and received a candy cane to place on the "9" tree.  For every candy cane on the tree at the end of the event, $1 will be donated to a charitable organization such as Toys for Tots.

I thought this video was cute, you can see Kaitlyn's little smirk when she sees her excellent score!

Time for awards.  Kaitlyn's outstanding Bar score landed her 3rd overall.  Excellent start!

Her Vault score was good enough to land her 5th overall.

Kaitlyn finished 10th overall for her first competition at the Excel Silver level and was happy to return to competition.  We are super proud of her!  Her team finished 4th out of 7 teams.  Here's hoping for a healthy and fun competition season!