Throughout the weekend as many 400 gymnasts will tumble among the traditional apparatuses at GymSouth for its Mardi Gras Classic.

The meet began its first session Friday afternoon with gymnasts from Courthouse, DawgHouse, Fusion and Delta Explosion gym’s. The first session saw girls ages 6-to-14 compete in four different age groups.

Cherry Robbins, owner of GymSouth was pleased with how well the first session went and looks forward to the rest of the weekend.

“Everything went very smoothly, we had no problems at all. Everybody did a great job, the judges did a great job and it went off without a hitch,” Robbins said.

Robins said meets like the Mardi Gras Classic help develop younger gymnast’s skills because of constant practicing on skills. Once the meet season is over, the girls get to work on a lot of new skills and progress to the next level.

“If they’re starting this for their first year it’s just a good base for them just to grow in this sport.”

In the first two sessions of the meet, gymnasts will compete on level three, which defines the difficulty of moves done on apparatuses.

“The girls do handstand on the beam and they do little circles on the bars, those are always good skills,” Robbins said. “On the floor they do round-off rebounds. It’s a little bit of a lower level but the girls still did a great job on all their skills.”

DawgHouse gymnastics – out of Starkville – won the tournament with an even 112 overall score. Courthouse finished with a team score of 109.725 and Fusion placed third at 107.400.

“They’ve been second consistently at every meet they’ve been to this season and they’ve been beaten by less than a half of a point,” said Reg Shurden, coach of DawgHouse. “So today it was good for us to win.”

Shurden said he saw a lot of improvement from his gymnasts from their body positions on dismounts and their techniques on bars. Dawg House only competed in the first session of the Mardi Gras Classic this weekend.

Shurden teaches his girls to stay focused during competitions and to not get rattled.

“We do a lot of pressure sets in the gym to make them try and get distracted and try and keep them focused,” he said.

Shurden was judging during the first session and wasn’t able to talk his girls through each apparatus. However, normally he’d tell his team to leave each even they finish at the event and do what is needed to finish out the event.

In the individual all-around events, Courthouse and DawgHouse shared a piece of the glory.

For Courthouse gym, Kinsley Thigpen, Breelyn Wright and De’Andra Lee swept the top three positions for group A. Emma Duncan-Hougue, Hillary Hathcock and Sara Beth Martin accomplished the same feat for group D.

Dawg House’s Emma Claire Spradling, Veronica Dunne and Georgia Neal claimed the bronze, silver and gold medals for group B. They also kept Courthouse from another top three sweep in group C with Skylar Flores medalling at bronze. Hannah Slade and Jayden Freeman took home the silver and gold for Courthouse.