Stanford Open 2013

Brandon's been looking forward to this meet at Stanford University for a long time. Being a level 6 gymnast this season meant he was finally old enough/experienced enough to go.

Saturday evening, a few hours after we flew into town, we watched the NCAA mens gymnastics meet being held as part of the same event and in the same building. Three of the level 10 gymnasts from our gym did well enough in their own meet Friday afternoon to qualify to compete in the Saturday night NCAA session. So not only was it phenomenal to watch these college teams compete, but we had homeboys to root for as well.

Brandon competed the next morning. Time for some math....humor me. There were 94 boys from all over the country competing in level 6 (probably about double what we are used to competing against in local meets). Those boys were divided into 3 age divisions. Brandon's was the biggest with 42 kids and he tied for 5th, officially taking 6th place All Around. Looking at the scores of the boys in the other age divisions...there was 1 boy with a higher AA score in the older age division and 4 higher in the younger....which means 10 kids all together. So Brandon had a higher AA score than 84 other kids in this big national meet! Hot dang!

I took a ridiculous amount of pictures. I won't subject you to them all...but here's a few of my favorites:

Brandon will likely not be pleased that I posted this picture....understandably he doesn't like to show moments where he is not at his tip top peak performance. But I think it's a really interesting picture and was kind of amazed that I caught it. While Bryan took video with my phone, I took rapid shots with my camera. I was zoomed in tight and was more or less watching the whole routine from the view finder. So when Brandon inexplicably and uncharacteristically fell out of his handstand on rings, it made me jump. I couldn't see the whole scene...just him suddenly dropping out of center focus in my view....and I had a moment of panic, thinking he was falling to the floor rather than just hanging. The kid rallied. Coach Adam said Brandon did exactly what he would've told him to do, only he did it on his own. He swung back up into his handstand so he could get credit for the skill and then finished the routine.

Getting all chalked up in prep for high bar...while watching teammate and best friend Andres competing his routine.

Proper gymnast good sport etiquette....shaking hands with the competitor on either side of you on the podium. Here Brandon and Andres are laughing about shaking hands with each other...seeing as they are teammates. These two are the same level, same age division so they compete against each other as well as with each other for team awards. They are similar in skill so depending on the meet and event, sometimes Andres gets a higher score, sometimes Brandon. Usually Brandon edges ahead slightly by the time they hit All Around. But how fun that the two can be such good friends, root for each other and be sincerely happy at a good score...despite the fact that they are competitors for the same awards.

After the meet was over we took the level 6 boys to see this cool display in a courtyard on campus near the building they had been competing in. With cameras at the ready and parents still in shutterbug mode, an impromptu photo shoot occurred....

What a good looking group of gymnasts.