- Nov 16, 2012
- 914
- 1,792
We will be leaving for Nationals tomorrow. These are my first Nationals as a coach and I'm a little bit nervous, but also super excited. We have three girls competing, one junior and two seniors. These are the first Nationals for the junior girl, the seniors have already a few national comps under their belts. Last year they did super well and as a club we got the first medal ever on seniors.
This season has been rough for everyone. The girls have fought back from severe injuries, had fear issues and devastating disappointments at competitions. Now they are all, thank God, injury free and doing ok.
Today we had the last full practice before the comp. They will only have a quick touch on the equipment tomorrow before we leave.
And oh wow, that final practice was full of emotion. It was a battle for every one, at first it seemed like nothing worked, they fell and fell again, did have very rough time on some surprising skills that they have had for a long time. They made it to the last hour of practice, when the oldest one all of sudden started to cry, almost hysterically. And I can tell you that I have never seen her cry, except the two times when she has got severely injured. She told me how scared she is of falling off the beam on her beam series and injuring herself. She had a long cry, and we talked. I promised that she can scratch beam if she will feel like this again tomorrow. But at the end of practice, she was ok again and told that crying helped a lot, and that she could tell how she feels and how she has felt since she injured herself the last time.
Then I had a quick conversation with the junior girl, and she was fine, a little bit nervous and quiet but still pretty positive. Then I took the other senior girl to the side, because she had been so hard on herself on beam. She spent almost two hours on the beam, refusing to stop practicing until she was happy about her routine (which would be never). She was beating herself for falling on a certain (easy) skill over and over. I had a very long talk with her about goals, expectations, her perfectionism, her struggle with fears and overcoming them, her mental state right now and how she has progressed so much at handling disappointments and failure over this past year. When the conversation went deeper, she started to cry as well. I told her several times, several different ways, how insanely proud of her we are and will always be, no matter what happens at that one competition. I think it was an important conversation, and I'm so happy that she trusted me to tell all those things that were on her heart and that she had so hard time telling me about.
I hope that it all cleaned the air and made the girls feel and remember that it's just one competition and that we will always love them and be proud of them, no matter what they do. And I also think that it was important for them to feel like they are allowed to feel broken, hurt, scared and insecure sometimes and those are very accepted feelings. Gymnast are so often so tough that they don't allow those feelings on themselves.
They all left home looking happier than what they looked when they arrived to practice and I count that as success.
Wish us luck! I hope that we will come back with many awesome memories.
This season has been rough for everyone. The girls have fought back from severe injuries, had fear issues and devastating disappointments at competitions. Now they are all, thank God, injury free and doing ok.
Today we had the last full practice before the comp. They will only have a quick touch on the equipment tomorrow before we leave.
And oh wow, that final practice was full of emotion. It was a battle for every one, at first it seemed like nothing worked, they fell and fell again, did have very rough time on some surprising skills that they have had for a long time. They made it to the last hour of practice, when the oldest one all of sudden started to cry, almost hysterically. And I can tell you that I have never seen her cry, except the two times when she has got severely injured. She told me how scared she is of falling off the beam on her beam series and injuring herself. She had a long cry, and we talked. I promised that she can scratch beam if she will feel like this again tomorrow. But at the end of practice, she was ok again and told that crying helped a lot, and that she could tell how she feels and how she has felt since she injured herself the last time.
Then I had a quick conversation with the junior girl, and she was fine, a little bit nervous and quiet but still pretty positive. Then I took the other senior girl to the side, because she had been so hard on herself on beam. She spent almost two hours on the beam, refusing to stop practicing until she was happy about her routine (which would be never). She was beating herself for falling on a certain (easy) skill over and over. I had a very long talk with her about goals, expectations, her perfectionism, her struggle with fears and overcoming them, her mental state right now and how she has progressed so much at handling disappointments and failure over this past year. When the conversation went deeper, she started to cry as well. I told her several times, several different ways, how insanely proud of her we are and will always be, no matter what happens at that one competition. I think it was an important conversation, and I'm so happy that she trusted me to tell all those things that were on her heart and that she had so hard time telling me about.
I hope that it all cleaned the air and made the girls feel and remember that it's just one competition and that we will always love them and be proud of them, no matter what they do. And I also think that it was important for them to feel like they are allowed to feel broken, hurt, scared and insecure sometimes and those are very accepted feelings. Gymnast are so often so tough that they don't allow those feelings on themselves.
They all left home looking happier than what they looked when they arrived to practice and I count that as success.
Wish us luck! I hope that we will come back with many awesome memories.
We took some fancy team pictures all together. These are the memories that you can make nowhere else
