We arrive early evening Saturday night, drop our stuff in the room, go out for a bite to eat and head to bed. We hop up bright and early Sunday morning and don the hoochie mama attire and head to the convention center. The girls did awesome on Sunday and landed themselves in 1st place out of 6 and only in the lead by a little over a point. Talk about excited. We got the text from the team mom of their success over lunch and Emily (another friend), Calli and Carson immediately had to text their daddies to give them the news.
In my head I'm thinking so how do a group of nine year olds handle the pressure of performing again tomorrow so that they can remain in first place because they all wanted it bad! A group of 34 girls from 6 to 11 all had their eye on the coveted jacket and they wanted it. I heard one mom from another team say that her daughter had told her "she wanted that jacket so bad she could taste the leather". Although it wasn't leather, I got the point and I think it was a little over the top. Ok so I don't think that's healthy but that's how some of these kids were thinking. We spent the afternoon swimming and headed a few miles outside of Ft Worth to Incredible Pizza so the girls could have something to do that night where they couldn't get hurt.
In my head I'm thinking so how do a group of nine year olds handle the pressure of performing again tomorrow so that they can remain in first place because they all wanted it bad! A group of 34 girls from 6 to 11 all had their eye on the coveted jacket and they wanted it. I heard one mom from another team say that her daughter had told her "she wanted that jacket so bad she could taste the leather". Although it wasn't leather, I got the point and I think it was a little over the top. Ok so I don't think that's healthy but that's how some of these kids were thinking. We spent the afternoon swimming and headed a few miles outside of Ft Worth to Incredible Pizza so the girls could have something to do that night where they couldn't get hurt. Later that night, I got a little peak inside Calli's head and saw how mature she was in all of this (I'm not sure if mature is the right word). In that performance earlier that day, the girls have several stunts. One of the stunts is kinda difficult (well they are all difficult but somehow they make it look so easy) and Calli and Carson are both bases for their flyer Gracie....darling girl. So Gracie goes up in the air along with the other 5 flyers and she is the only one who hints that she's about to go down. Somehow she saves herself from falling and from even detracting from the group as a whole. Calli told me that when Gracie went up she over rotated and started to tilt to the right, which is what we saw. Calli yells up at her "Gracie, I'm not letting you fall. Tighten up". As I said they recover and as they brought Gracie down in sync with the others they all yelled "we did it" as they ran to their next pose. Of course all of this was inconspicous to us in the stands and who knows if the judges saw or heard them but I think it was cute. It shows the teamwork and determination they have. Good life skills I think.
So they go into Monday in 1st place and most of the girls were nervous. And I think their moms were just as nervous. They performed but not quite as solidly as the day before. The big debate was whether or not we dropped a girl in our stunt or she came down too early and stepped out. All of a sudden we had about 33 experts on the whole routine, scoring, deductions...the whole nine yards. They had it all figured out as to who was going to win 1st place but then they would all second guess themselves. I wanted to say "if you wait an hour and 10 minutes, you'll know". So we end up pulling it off and inched their way into first place winning by .17 of a point. A win is a win though! They earned their jackets that are 3 sizes too big and made for a great trip home.
I don't know if i have mentioned but one of Calli's friends that has cheered with her for 2 years now and is in the 6th grade found out right before Christmas that she had a brain tumor. She's undergoing radiation and it's obviously something that we pray about often. Of course it's caused her to drop out of cheer but the girls still wanted to honor her. So they sewed (or the team mom did) these gray ribbons on the side of their uniforms in honor of her. Very sweet I thought. I'm hoping it put a smile on her face to know her team misses her.
Of course then there is the packing, laundry, and the preparation to do it all over again Saturday. Luckily (on my pocketbook) it's in Houston this weekend.
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