As we are awaiting our decadence onto the mat in Orlando, Florida, our hearts are beating so loud it’s as if they were plugged into a sound system and thumped for the whole stadium to hear. Our palms are sweating as if we are in a sauna, dressed like it’s the middle of winter. Our minds? Anywhere but in that stadium.
My mind continusiously went back to our last competition before Nationals, where we got second place and our rivals came in first. The feeling when your heart is in your toes so far that if it exploded your toes would be painted red. When they came in bragging that they won like a little kid would brag about getting the fresher baked cookies than his friend. After that competition our coachs doubted us as if we had just lost everything we ever accomplished. “third place or fourth place would be good!” They told us on the plane ride down.
But these thoughts were cut off by a man speaking “And up next from Flemington, New Jersey is the Flemington Pioneers!” Any worries we had turned into a fake smile trying to cover it all. As we ran out on the mat it seemed as if we were dropped into a cave and the lights were just on us and everything else was pitch black. The music sounded like it was my own personal band playing right in my ear. Our routine was flawless until the stunt we changed two hours before performing on the mat, somehow didn’t turn out. She slipped and we fell, our whole pyramid. As the music came to a sudden stop we realized what had just happened, maybe our coaches were right. Maybe we were a third place team. The warm tears started falling down my face as if I had just broken my leg. As we got off the mat everyone was yelling, “why didn’t your group catch the foot? If we loose, it’s all your fault.” Our name wouldn’t go down in history. We would be failures. And to make it even worse, they had our whole routine on replay after we had just performed so we could see how we fell and could have possibly taken away our first place prize. As we were walking down to see our coaches, a man came up to me and saw my tears and kindly said, “I know you guys fell, but I just wanted to say that you were one of the best teams up there and I wouldn’t be surprised if you took home those glistening white jackets.” That made me cry even harder. What is this guy thinking? We’re terrible, anyone would beat us. As awards were being called we all had but a smile on our faces. Fifth place, not us. Fourth place, not us. Third place, NOT US. This could not be happening! We could possibly win this and prove our coaches wrong. It was between us and our rivals that beat us the competition before. Second place, Rams… We all jumped up and instead of crying because of sadness, we were crying for joy. We had just won Nationals in Orlando, Florida and our name would go down in history. Those silky white jackets would be ours. We proved our coaches wrong. The satisfaction of lifting up that trophy was if I had just won the loterry. As we walked through the parks at night with our glistening white jackets, everyone congratulated us with the fake smile we wore as we ran onto the mats. The team that wanted fourth of fifth place our now National Champions.
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