Park’s gymnastics team had a successful first meet of the season Dec. 5. Park placed second with a score of 131.6. They competed against Hopkins and Washburn, losing to Hopkins but conquering Washburn. This meet was an away meet that took place at Hopkins High School.
Head coach Dawn Thielen said the meet was a great opportunity to get a feel for some of the more important meets later in the season. She said the stakes are slightly higher for conference meets.
“This is a great first meet to have because it’s not a conference meet, which has a little bit more pressure, and it’s a preview of three of the teams we go against for sections, so it gives us an introduction to what the section (gymnastics) equipment is going to be,” Thielen said. “We compete here for our last meet of the season, and it’s just a really good way to get those first meet jitters out of the way. Then we can go back and problem-solve how to pre-arrange things to benefit the future scores.”
Sophomore Isa Melendez said she’s happy and proud of herself today with her performance because she competed with confidence.
“Personally what went well was that I felt confident and proud of myself at the end of what I did,” Melendez said.
According to junior Amun Salam, the first meet went well for her even though it was intimidating. She said she still has a lot to improve on.
“It went pretty well. (The) first meet was kind of scary, but surprisingly, it went well, but I still have a lot to work on,” Salam said.
Thielen said the team has been focused on working through injuries. She said it’s okay that the girls aren’t performing at the level they want to be at because the season has just started and there’s still a lot of time left to improve.
“We got a couple (of) girls that kind of came in with injuries from previous sports that we’ve been working on and working through, and so they’re not performing at the level they want to be at yet,” Thielen said. “So we’ve had to kind of work on that confidence, and you know it’s okay if you’re not where you want to be yet. It’s the beginning of the year, so our purpose is to get to that level, at the end of the season and to be healthy doing it.”
According to Salam, her performance was good compared to last year despite having an injury. She said it’s important to think about the positives and not just the negatives.
“My foot injuries definitely played into that (the level of performance). But despite that, I did pretty good compared to even last year. My scores were higher than last year’s scores,” Salam said. “It’s better to focus on the positive rather than the negative.”
According to Melendez, doing stretches before the meet helped her performance today. She said the support shown by the team also contributed to her performance.
“When we did our stretches, and all my friends on the team hyping me up helped me do good (at today’s meet),” Melendez said.
Salam said she wants to work on her confidence for future meets. She said she wants to focus on small details too, like pointing her toes.
“(I want) to not doubt myself. I second-guess myself a lot. Also to be cleaner, have straighter lines, point my toes, small things like that are helpful,” Salam said.
Melendez said she wants to sharpen her skills on the beam for upcoming meets. She said she wants to ensure she can hear the music for her floor routine as well.
“I want to make sure that I can hear my music, and I want to stick my faux turn on the beam,” Melendez said.
Thielen said the biggest goal for this season is to build up the girl’s confidence. She said she wants to make sure the girls have fun while meeting their goals.
“Our biggest goal is just building the girls’ confidence and making sure that they’re having fun. A lot of girls have big goals. They want to get some good scores, they want to try and make it to the state this year,” Thielen said. “Those are great goals to have, but it’s really easy to lose track of why you do something if you have that mindset. Our focus is to help them get there, but still have fun.”
The next gymnastics meet is an invitational against White Bear Lake Area at 11 a.m. Dec. 7 at White Bear Lake Area High School.
