When Life Hands you Lemons

We started practice with a speed bump. A talented coed flier decided to leave the team. Thank the lord we have an amazing back up flier, Bri. Bri was my flier on all-girl last year and she is by far one of the most talent fliers I have ever had the pleasure of working with. We took this set back as a challenge in my eyes. We worked hard at practice to learn the new changes and progress forward.

This practice was not going to be a running practice as previously planned, instead we were going to work on the elements of our routine with the new changes. We reped tumbling but nothing really changed there.

First pyramid took up the mass majority of our practice time. Last Thursday we noticed that each side of the pyramid was turning opposite ways; So Carter went and asked Pat which way he wanted us to turn. He returned to my displeasure saying that my side of the pyramid was turning the wrong way. I know this doesn't sound like a huge deal, but after doing rep after rep of turning one way and having to switch gets frustrating. So we had to rep like crazy just to get my side of the pyramid consistent again.

Back to tonight's practice...Molly, my pic (partner in crime) for holding pyramids, decided to ask Pat one more time which side was turning right. You could never guess what he said right? After watching each side do it their way, he decided that we were turning the correct way the entire time. So we had to rep again to relearn our technique. Thank the lord it did not take as long.

 

After this whole dilemma we had to run our side of the pyramid full out. After a while it starts to suck really bad being on the bottom of the pyramid. Mind you I don't have a back spot this entire time. Its just me and Church...and Jessy or Bri now, I'm not too sure. But anyways its funny because no matter how tired you are you need to just keep going. Think about it, if I fall or drop my primary flier, Church, then Jessy will fall. So I need to be on point at all times. Good thing I conditioned myself all summer. I remember the first day learning the pyramid and thinking "there is no way on Gods green earth that I will be able to hold this." That was also the point when Church was doing tap dances on my shoulders and giving me shoe hickeys every rep. For future reference a shoe hickey is a hickey from a shoe... or as my good friend Katie Sakala likes to describe it "if a bear mauled your shoulder like it was made of fresh meat after you spent 10 hours in the Mexican sun with no sunscreen."

Finally we moved onto the cheer pyramid. Which pretty much means break time for me. Well not really I had to work on our rewind stunt, but those are going well. We didn't spend much time on this pyramid today. Carter and Adam's side had a hit though!

Team stunt, to my surprise Bri was put as my flier! I was so ecstatic! We did not spend a long time here either, but each group is improving at a good pace. Even with the new flier switch we made it through the sequence.

Baskets were last. As expected I have to throw the all-girl basket. I really don't mind because Jaclyn is my flier and shes a fantastic basket girl. We did our normal warm up, and by the end we were able to throw our full out elite basket. The first ones were good and by the last one you could see an improvement.

Overall I think everyone had a good practice. We each were frustrated at times but as a team we pulled each other together and had a productive practice. It could have been disastrous being as a person quit we could have all just said screw it and quit too. But that's not the kind of team this is. Everyone who is on the mat is there for a reason, we want to go down and do the best we can do. Whether it be first place or last place. We are going to have more speed bumps along the way but these are the moments we are going to cherish when were down in Florida. We're going to remember the good times sure, but its these times where we had to overcome situations placed in front of us that we have no control over that we will be thankful for. This is when the real journey begins.

PS. Thank you Katie Sakala for the lovely picture!

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