leaps of faith

Give me a second here to cover some background.  These photos are from when Beach had just turned 4, she didn't start gymnastics until she was 6 & a half, this was a tiny preschool gym and splash class at a rec center half the lesson was gymnastics and half was swim. 

Sure you can wear your pj's to gym,
it's not like we are ever going to do this sport seriously.

Now, tiny gymnastics ninja is legally blind in one eye.  She has no depth perception & no peripheral perception in either eye.

Can you spot her?

No big deal....unless you are stupid enough to put her in soccer or to chest pass her a basketball or want her to do something really strange like a squat-on the low-bar jump to high-bar but when does anyone need to do something like that. Oh, really?  Turns out you need to do just that in a level 5 Bar Routine.  And there was a bit of trouble she could squat-on and she could jump but she couldn't seem to do both together. I would say we are over the hump now and she is safely sailing from one bar to another, you miss some, you make some, but overall it is better if I'm not watching & gasping.

Not quite strong enough & her arms were too short
& her head too big to do a back-bend (lol)

Today I happened to accidentally see Bars.  There was Beach standing on top of a large block wedged under the low-bar creating a jumping platform. 

Too scared to do vault

Logic says: a platform is way easier to jump from than a bar.  And it is about 5 inches closer (?) so easier, right?  Unless you're Beach who jumps based on muscle memory, faith that the bar is where it was last time she jumped and made it.  

The different placement led to a jump that resembled a flying squirrel jumping into a jet engine; sprawled, tentative, and insane.  It was so apparent that she could not judge the distance the mom beside me gasped saying watching that pitched her stomach like a roller-coaster.  Yeah, it wasn't much better for me. 



But she scared the crap out of this guy when she
actually jumped from low-bar to high-bar



The coach managed, "That was closer." without laughing at the even more blind failed second attempt.  But within a few tries she was grabbing the high-bar with the rest of them.

It is good for me to be reminded how much this sport gives back to her.  It is so easy for me to see all her hard work and to forget that it truly goes both ways.