Pipkin pushing for state
GILROY – It is not hard to find 10-year-old Carly Pipkin.
Five days a week for more than three hours per session, Pipkin is hard at work training with Airborne Gymnastics in Santa Clara.
The garlic gymnast, who is preparing for the Level 7 State Championships at CSU-Sacramento on March 20, recently took first place in the all-around competition at the Desert Devils Classic in Arizona with a 37.55 total.
The Airborne squad also took first place in all four skill levels to sweep the optionals meet. Pipkin followed up with a second-place finish in the all-around at last Saturday’s Spirit of the Flame meet in Santa Clara, placing first on beam and first on floor.
In her first year at Level 7s, Pipkin placed seventh at the state meet by scoring second on floor, fourth on vault, 10th on bars, and seventh on beam.
“Just to do my best,” said Pipkin of her goals for this year’s state championships. “Last year’s routine on floor was different than this year so I had to learn a new floor routine, but my beam routine is the same.”
To learn the new floor exercise, Pipkin had to take an additional two-hour floor clinic every week until she mastered it. Pipkin’s favorite event is her floor routine, where she gets to show her versatility on the mat in front of the judges with a one-minute-and-20-second performance.
“(Floor is my favorite) because you get to dance and you get to tumble, too,” Pipkin said. “It’s an event where you can have fun. Other events take more concentration.”
Pipkin, a fifth-grader at Paradise Valley School in Morgan Hill, has scored 9.6 on her floor exercise in her last two competitions.
“It felt pretty good doing that again,” said Pipkin, who also competes on vault, bars and beam.
The local gymnast began her career at age three with the Morgan Hill Gymnastics Club. After five years there, she moved to Airborne Gymnastics, so she could compete in more optional meets.
“At the beginning, it just felt fun and later on it became more fun as I learned more skills. It feels good after you achieve them. You feel so good about yourself,” Pipkin said. “When I first started, I just went out and had fun. Then I started understanding it more when I started doing it more.”
The more Pipkin practiced, the more skills she learned and the more interested she became in becoming a better gymnast. Pipkin was such a fast learner that she jumped from Level 5 to Level 7, and will move on to Level 8 next season.
“I can handle it,” Pipkin said. “I’m just trying to focus on this year. I’m having fun and learning new skills.”
Pipkin watches gymnastics on television any chance she gets, admiring U.S. national team gymnast Carly Patterson because “she spells her name the same as me and my initials are just like hers.”
The tough competitor has been focusing herself for a strong showing at the state championships before making the jump up a level.
“Sometimes you feel that you’ve shown it off on floor and beam. You feel like you can stick anything. You feel pretty confident,” Pipkin said. “Vault is one of my events that I need to work mostly on. My bars are better than vault. I had to get used to the bars, though. Last year, I did not doo very good on bars. This year, I’ve been improving a lot.”
