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Tag: Agganis Arena

2008 Visa US Championships – Seniors Overall Review

Alicia Sacramone on beam during Day 1 of the 2008 Visa US ChampionshipsI don’t have as great of notes for the seniors as I did for the juniors – for both senior sessions, I sat with friends, and didn’t have the time to take detailed notes. The seniors were amazing to watch, mostly due to the sheer excitement of the crowd – it’s rarely that loud even for hockey games. Hundreds of little girls watching their heroines will do that.

Again, I am not the world’s greatest gymnastics writer, but I was there and know just enough about the sport to understand what’s going on. To review the senior competition, I’ll borrow a device from one of my favorite sports writers, Sports Illustrated’s Peter King, that I haven’t used in a while: Ten Things I Think I Think. Continue reading

2008 Visa US Championships, Juniors – Day 2

Yep, I’m still working on my thoughts from Seniors Day 1 – the Celtics and the Red Sox distracted me (I had Sox tickets last night, and was distracted by watching the Paul Pierce-drama filled Celtics-Lakers game after Seniors ended on Thursday night, and had work early in the morning on Friday…a timely post on Seniors was just not happening.)

Agganis Arena and the 2008 Visa Championships The Junior Championships just completed, with Jordyn Wieber taking it handily. She really distanced herself from Samantha Shapiro at the end of Rotation 2, with nearly a 3 point lead in the all-around. I game late, and I don’t know what happened to Shapiro in rotation 1 (she was first up on floor exercise), but she was either marked down because she was first, or something went wrong. I walked in as Wieber began her floor, and she was on – it was a statement performance. No one was going to take the title away from her this afternoon. The following are my thoughts on the rest of the session before I head back to see the seniors. Continue reading

The Closest I’ll Get to Covering the Olympics – This Week!

I have 6 posts in draft form that I’m working on. I need to drink more caffeine when I get home from work each evening in order to finish them all. But before I finish all of them, I have more important blogging to do!

Chellsie Memmel (aka Scrunchie Girl), who will compete in the Visa US Championships later this weekYes, your trusty wanna-be sports blogger will be attending the Visa U.S. Championships for women’s gymnastics this week at Agganis Arena in Boston, MA. This is the closest I have ever gotten to attending anything having to do with the Olympics, as this event is the first part of the three-prong Olympic team selection process for the women’s gymnastics team. I am not an official media member, so there will be no fancy live-blogging. But I will be taking notes and blogging after the junior preliminary round and the senior preliminary round on Thursday. Will I give you all the skill by skill breakdown? No, I think International Gymnast does a great job of that. But who else can comment on leotard colors (please, I hope no one breaks out lime green) and any standouts like when I picked out “Scrunchie Girl” (later World Champion Chellsie Memmel) during the 1999 U.S. Classic Child Elite competition. Take note, Junior competitors – if I find a reason to anoint you with a nickname during the competition, then this means only good things for your competitive future.

So I hope that you check back on Thursday for my blog entries about the Visa Championships! I promise to consume enough caffeine that day to finish them all!

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