Ha! Bet you thought
this was about me meeting someone, didn’t you?
Nah. It’s the noun form of “meet”
as in gymnastics meet.
Last Sunday was the first official meet that my oldest
daughter has participated in. She’s been
doing gymnastics for about two years now, I think. She transitioned from dance to this. I’ll admit to being a little bit sad when she
danced her last recital. She was so good
and having so much fun, I was going to miss seeing them (my youngest is still
in dance so there will still be recitals to see but she is also in
gymnastics. I imagine my time at recitals
is limited).
My oldest has really taken to gymnastics. For the most part,
she cartwheels more than she walks these days.
The recent shift in my destination made that a little difficult
though. She used to practice all the
time in the house we used to live in but now when she tries it in my new living
room, she ends up hitting the chair or the coach or her little sister. Just not as much room unfortunately, but that’s
what basements are for, right?
After a few years of just learning gymnastics and then
moving up through the different class levels, she finally got to “team” and
Sunday was her first official meet. I had the girls last weekend and since the
meet was two hours away, I decided to take them down the night before and we
would stay at a hotel. This alone would
have been enough. My girls love to stay
at hotels. Unfortunately, we got on the
road later than I wanted so by the time we got there it was almost 7:30 and
instead of maybe seeing a movie or going for a swim in the hotel pool, it was a
choice between going out to eat or having room service. That really wasn’t a question. The girls screamed “Room service!” and thus I
had one the worst meal of my life. Well, the stuff I ordered was terrible. The girls’ chicken tenders were delicious,
though.
We managed to get up, get breakfast and to the meet in time
although we did cut it close. My ex took
the gymnast from the truck to get her hair done while her sister and I went to
find a place to park. We went to the go
into the meet only to find that it cost $10.00 and I had no cash. For some reason, the teen-ager manning the
entrance with a lockable cash box and a hand stamp for the “ticket” didn’t take
credit cards. Imagine. A quick dash to a nearby ATM (thankfully
located in the strip mall we were in) and we made our way to the seats held
by my ex (she had already been there for at least 20 minutes).
The competition began and my heart swelled. I believe there are few things in life more
rewarding than seeing your own flesh and blood do something they love
doing. Of course, it took a while to
actually see her do her thing. These
meets, as I now understand, are four events:
the beam, the floor, the bar and the vault. The teams (there were two other gymnastic
groups competing) split up into smaller groups and all four events went on at
the same time, the groups rotating as they finished. It wasn’t until my daughter started her first
routine, the beam, that I noticed they were keeping individual scores.
I actually wish I hadn’t seen that.
You see, up until this point, all of my daughter’s gymnastic
exhibitions and practice has all been for fun; to see her do it; to watch her challenge
herself to do a back walkover (not really sure exactly what that looks like but
I remember the term). Now she’s being judged on what she’s doing and
I guess I should have realized that would happen at some point, I wasn’t ready
for it. Personally, I didn’t want to
know her scores and I didn’t want to compare them to the others performing but
I did. You can’t help it. Seeing how you stack up against others is at
the core of competition, right?
Midway through the competition, after my daughter did the
routine she was in rotation for, I noticed the award cart off to the side. It was loaded with medals and trophies. I leaned over to my ex and asked “Is this one
of those deals where no one is a loser and everyone gets a trophy?” She smirked and said, “No. This isn’t like
soccer.” You see, when my girls did
soccer, everyone got a trophy even though the team they played on came in last
place in the standings.
I have never been a fan of the “everyone is a winner” mentality
that seems to permeate over child sports these days. Can’t let anyone know they failed, so give
them a “participation award.” I’ve never
thought that was really healthy for the child as they then think they get rewarded
all the time in life when that will rarely happen once they get older.
As the meet went on, I noticed that my daughter’s scores
weren’t as high as the other girls and in some cases, toward the bottom. It wasn’t that my daughter couldn’t do the
things she was doing. She can and she’s
very good but she has a bit of a concentration problem. She gets distracted easily and tends to mess up when she does...unless it's walking from event to event. If they gave medals for proper composure as
you move from one event to the other, she would have an armful of them. Head up, arms back, tip-toeing as she walked
with legs straight. Is that an Olympic
event yet? I mean, they have ping pong,
why not this?
On the routines, though, she wasn’t as good as the others
but this is her first event and she was having more fun than she was being
serious about nailing the scores. This
was fine with me. I would prefer her to
have fun rather than stress out over getting a perfect score. I’m sure that will come in time but for now,
let her be a kid.
Then the competition was over….
…and they started calling out the winners…
First of all, my ex and I realized we may have been wrong
about this not being like soccer…especially when they brought out the stands
for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners…and
then the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th,
9th and 10th place spots.
It was funny because the #1 spot was the highest stand and then they had
descending levels for each one after, the smallest being 6th
place. The rest were just markers on the floor. I commented to my ex that I was surprised
they didn’t go beneath the floor for the other levels.
It was looking like more kids were going to get awards than
we originally thought but as they started announcing and my daughter wasn’t up
there on the stands, I started to get worried.
I was so proud of how she would cheer her teammates when they were
called but I was worried how she was going to feel if she didn’t get
something. My ex and I would handle it
as we should but to be frank, I didn’t want to face it. I didn’t want my child to be upset because
she didn’t get a medal and there were some girls who were getting 5 or 6.
Finally, in the floor routine awards, she got a medal. Sure it was for 10th place but she
was so happy and I was so happy for her.
You’d think she just got gold at the Summer Olympics she was beaming so
much. She really did have something to be proud of as I have since learned that the medals are based on a percentage of top scores. Coming in 10th isn't so bad when you consider she was in the largest group.
She also received a small trophy
for participating like everyone else did but again; it was like she won it
because of her perfect score in all four categories. And to make things even better, her group won
overall in the competition so a big trophy was awarded to them.
Ultimately what came out of this was the “parent” moment
where at first I wanted my child to earn what she won and if she lost, she lost
but then I quickly switched to “Oh, give her something. She’s going to feel so sad if you don’t” mode. Turned out she got both: one for her
performance and one for participation so I didn’t have to worry about it but I
did.
We like to think we’re strong parents and will always do
what is fair and right for our children but when faced with the possibility
that your child may be sad or upset about something, all that goes out the
window. The trophy for us as parents is
to see your kid smile and when you see it happen, it’s like you’re standing on the
number 1 platform because you’re the winner.
And let’s face it, if you’re children are happy, you ARE the
winner.
