This competition was held in the weekend of January 17 and 18. Two Dutch clubs participated: GTV de Badhoeve and SV Pax. For Pax Demi Aarts, Valerya Boeravkina, Maaike Hoogstede and I came to Brussel. For the Badhoeve participated Fleurine Menijn, Evelien van Rheenen and Kim-Manou Brockhoff.
Friday we left at 8 o'clock, directly after our last training. After some searching in the end (altough we've already in this sports hall 2 times before, we still not managed to get there at once) we arrived at the gym about ten o'clock. There we met our host families. Maaike and I stayed with a family and Valerya and Demi with another. When we got home, we unpacked some of our stuff and went to bed.
We were told that we had to be in the sports hall at 12, for the opening ceremony with all gymnast. When we
arrived, Demi's competition was about to begin. For Demi it was the first time that she competed internationally
and she looked pretty nervous. But her routines were okay, her first, without apparatus was still a bit shaky and
insecure, but ball and ribbon were fine. Only in ribbon in the end she made some mistakes, but for the first time
it was a great competition.
After Demi's competition, the other half competition espoirs started. There were really some great espoirs competing,
especially the russians were great. There were two of them and sometimes they really did amazing things.
In the afternoon it was Valerya's turn to compete. She also didn't have much experience with international tournament,
it was the second time that she competed individual. Unfortunately she made some mistakes and
so she ended lower than she was able to.
At half past seven the senior competition finally started. Maaike's first routine was ball. She had some bad luck, she dropped the
ball and it looked like it would bounce back in the floor but it didn't and Maaike had to run after it to grab it again.
The other routines were okay, with only some small mistakes I believe.
My first routine was ball too, and it went pretty well, no big mistakes or big errors in difficulties. The other routines
were not so great, I had three big mistakes in hoop and a knot in ribbon. Clubs, the first part of the routine was good, only in
the end it was just a serie of mistakes.
At half past eleven(!) the competition was finally finished. I turned out to be in the apparatus final with ball and Maaike was 1st or
2nd reserve with ribbon.
The first part of the Sunday we watched the apparatus finals of the little girls, benjamins and espoirs. They really are great!
Especially the benjamins were so cute and they could do so much difficult things.
My routine wasn't great, there were no big mistakes in it but it was shaky and insecure. I could do better.
After the finals there was a closing ceremony with all gymnasts. We didn't wait for the banquet but we directly left to the Pizza Hut, where
we later met de girls of de Badhoeve and the gymnasts from Estonia. After dinner we went home. It was a really nice tournament, really nice to compete
altough the competitions took really long sometimes. I hope we'll go again next year.