Stars & Stripes

 This weekend we went to Erie, PA for the Stars & Stripes meet (on the banks of the frozen Lake Erie!)  I had very low expectations about Erie itself from a brief stop many years ago, but we were pleasantly surprised -- they had a nice downtown area, and the convention center was also very nice (it seems brand new).

One of the fun things about the meet was that they had a somewhat different group of teams than our usual upstate NY competitors -- teams from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Canada. (The judging also seemed a bit more generous than in some of the previous meets. The other parents said this meet was more typical of the scoring last year; they think the upstate judges have been very strict/harsh so far this year.)  

James had a very good meet.  He came in 3rd on pommel horse (8.1), second on rings (9.6), first on vault (8.5), first on parallel bars (8.1), and first on high bar (9.1).  He came in second all-around and won his first trophy!

For this meet, they had a ton of age groups -- so, instead of doing 6-8 year olds, they had separate awards for 7 and under, 8 year olds, 9 year olds, and so on.  They determine the age groups not by the boys' actual age, but by how old they will be on May 31. So, James is considered an 8-year old for competitions.  He was making some funny faces on the awards stand, and when we asked him why, it was because he didn't know why they thought he was an eight year old!

I looked at the online scoring, and not only did James come in second place all-around for his age group, but he would also have been second place overall, counting all the kids in his division. Yay, James!