The First Run Through..

Yesterday, exactly 16 practices before the first competition, my girls did our first run through of the entire routine, full out. While the stunts were an easy version of the routine (all double legged stunts and straight cradles), it is the back up routine for if we can not hit the more difficult stunts.

Our routine starts with jumps and since I have been drilling them jumps every practice since August 1st, their jumps looked phenomenal. I keep telling them that practice is really making them look perfect. Opening stunt hit with a tiny bobble on the cradle from the left stunt group.

Tumbling looked alright. Because of the lack of skills our tumbling is what I am trying to downplay the most. I am trying to make the routine a stunt, jumps and motions heavy routine so that judges will give us higher points on that instead of focusing on the lack of tumbling.

Since we only have nine our "pyramid" is a bunch of stunt tricks which then connects two full liberties to a shoulder-sit. The catch is that one of those liberties is a three man stunt (two bases one flier). I am hoping that we can get to working on it a lot next week as it will be by far the hardest point in the routine and there is no down-grade. We need a pyramid and with only nine its not going to be easy.

The cheer was the last thing we learned so it was a little shaky. The girls are having a fine time with the baskets, their half up extensions need some work (we need to work twisting in general) and the crowd involvement section looks fantastic! End stunt hit and ending dance looks amazing as they get it more solid each week!

Overall it was an amazing feeling to know that we have a month to make that look clean and if we do just that we will be fine. But it was even more amazing to know that over the next 15 practices I can up-grade it to the MAX. I will post videos as they start achieving some of the more difficult stunts!

5,6,7,8