A Night in the Dells!

I think I've started the last few blog posts with something about how busy I've been lately. Well, that's still true, but the last couple of days (although exhausting), have been so much fun! Yesterday, after a visit to the doctor to address the crazy hair dye allergy, Charley and I went to the Wisconsin Dells with the gymnastics team I've been working with. My boss, Barb, picked us up, and we started on a road trip. We had two groups of girls competing yesterday, so we didn't have a lot of time once we got there, before Barb had to get to the gym and get the group warmed up. Charley and I didn't go to the first session, because she hadn't napped on the drive, and I was fairly certain she wouldn't survive ANY gymnastics, if she didn't have a break. So we spent some time at the hotel, running around, and getting some rest, before going to the later session at the gym. After eating a real meal, playing in the arcade for awhile, and resting in the room, we were both finally ready to go to the meet. By the way... we spent over an hour in the arcade, and I didn't spend a dime. I'm so grateful that Charley doesn't really play video games, so she didn't realize that she had absolutely no control over the machines, that were playing in Demo Mode over and over again. She spun steering wheels, sat on motorcycles, and cheered herself on....never once realizing that she wasn't actually playing. At some point, she'll put the pieces together and I'll actually have to pay for her to play, but for now, what she doesn't know won't hurt her, right? Ha!

Charley and Chelsea...Team Cheerleaders!

We caught a ride with one of the gymnasts and her dad, and made our way to the meet around 6. My USA Gymnastics certification isn't currently registered with the gym I'm at, because originally, my boss hadn't intended to have me come to meets. So, I sat in the audience with the parents and watched from the background. Do you have any idea how hard it is to be a coach sitting in the bleachers? It had nothing to do with the parents. In fact, I think they like having me there, because I can explain the scoring to them, and they are all really wonderful people. The problem is, I'm standing there during warm-ups, seeing little corrections the girls need to make before they compete, but I'm too far away for them to hear me! At one point, I got close enough to the girls as they warmed up for floor, that Barb was sending them to me for corrections at one end of the floor, but other than that, I felt so helpless knowing that I could give the girls a pep-talk if only I could get closer to them! Anyway, their warm-ups weren't great, but when it came time to compete, the girls did GREAT! I was really proud of them. Their routines were rewarded, too, with several first place finishes and the team placed second out of 10 teams. 

The only thing that put a damper on the night was a little boy (the brother of someone from another team) who said something mean to Charley. At one point, during awards, Charley came up to me and said, "Mommy, that boy called me fat!" "What?!" I asked her. "He keeps saying, "Fat Girl, Fat Girl," she told me. I knelt down and told her, "Don't you ever listen to someone who is calling you names. You're perfect just the way you are. Don't play with that boy anymore." I stood there, stunned. She's three. The fact that a little boy would taunt her, and talk about her weight made me disgusted. A few minutes later, I saw the boy peeking his head out from behind a mat. "Fat Girl!" he yelled, and then hid behind the mat with his friend. He peeked out again, saw me coming, and quickly hid behind the mat again. And what did I do, when I walked up to him? I scolded him. I never saw myself as one to scold other peoples' children, but in this case, I felt I was justified. "How old are you?" I asked him. "Six," he replied. "You are picking on a little girl who is 3 years old. That's not nice. You hurt her feelings. When you call people names and pick on them, they won't want to play with you. You shouldn't speak that way to a little girl EVER again," I lectured. The boy nodded, and you know what? He was nice to Charley after that. I saw him seeking her out to play with her...with me watching like a hawk... and he was playing nicely. It might not have been my place to scold someone else's child, but I'm not going to just let someone give my kid a complex at 3 years old! Ugh.  I wished I'd known where his parents were, because I probably would've had words for them, too. Anyway, although that left me with a bad taste in my mouth, the actual competition went well, Charley was well-behaved, and the team awards, we went back to the hotel tired, but happy.

This morning, Charley and I took our time getting ready. Barb left early to get the next group of girls started at the meet. Charley and I had breakfast, packed up the car, and then drove over to the meet to catch as much of it as we could. We got there in time to catch three out of four events. The girls looked a little bit nervous, but I expected that, because this group of girls was younger and for most of them, it was only their second meet. They were doing pretty well, until they got to beam. Again, I was on the sidelines, but as I watched their routines, and saw the corresponding scores, I felt like something was wrong. Barb came over to me, and said the judge wasn't giving the girls credit for their dismount. She went over to the meet referee to contest it, and the referee backed the judge's score, but said if we could find that it was acceptable in the rule books, they would give us the points back. So I got online, pulled up the rule book, and guess what? We were right. So, basically the judge had to go back and change all of our girls' scores. It was a lot of back and forth, and our team held up awards for a long time. A LONG time. But we wanted to make sure our girls got credit for the routines they performed. Then, they started calling beam scores, and none of our girls were in the top 8. That was a huge red flag, because we'd had some decent scores, so we went back and checked, and sure enough, the scores hadn't been changed in the computer. Again, there was a lot of back and forth. In the end, several of our girls were called up for the wrong placements, including one who placed first all-around, but got called up for second place, which I thought was a bummer for them. They all walked away with awards, but it would've been fun for them to be called up for the awards they'd actually earned...Which were generally, significantly higher. Anyway, the miscalculations impacted our team score, too, so while we were called up to receive the third place team award, I'm pretty sure we'd actually taken second. But after nearly two hours of going back and forth with the judges, Barb and I were both so exhausted, we just decided the actual totals would be posted online, and we'd see our real placement there. The bottom line is, our girls did a fantastic job, and I'm very proud. 

We drove home right after the meet, and Charley crashed within 10 minutes. She was such a trooper, in the gym for two days in a row, and she really didn't get crabby until the very end of today's session.  Overall, it was a really fun (albeit fast and STRESSFUL) trip. It was exciting to see the girls I've been working with perform so well. There were little blips in performances here and there, but those will work themselves out with more competition experience. After their performance this weekend, I can't wait to see how these girls do in their next couple of meets! With that said, I'm COMPLETELY wiped. Have a great weekend everybody!