Texas Days 3&4

Days 3 and 4 are going to be combined because they were a long whirlwind! 

Double Dutch Day was Saturday and the thing about double dutch jump roping is that it is truly a team sport. You must have at least 3 people to do double dutch (2 to turn the ropes and one to jump). We have now labeled double dutch day/ drama dutch day. It is very hard to keep all the jumpers in a dd team calm and happy before they perform. It doesn't help when they fight the coach on changing something in the routine at the last minute. You have to put your faith in the coach that he knows what he is doing. When you are 11 and 12, that is not easy. 

B started her day with double dutch speed. This is very straight forward, B and another girl were the spinners and 2 people jumped for 1 minute each. You try to get the most jumps today in that 2 minute period. There were a lot of misses and they certainly did not do as well as they had been doing in practice. Next up was her double dutch 3 person. All 3 girls jumped and spun at different times. I have seen them nail this routine and make it look like it was easy. Not the case on Saturday. The coach had changed a few things and they forgot things half way thru their minute and 15 seconds. There were tears and frustration all around. 

It is hard to parent your child and give them advice and cheer for them all at the same time. I had to take B into a bathroom stall and remind her that this was Nationals, this is what she had worked for all year long and I was so proud of her for just getting this far. I told her that she could go out on the floor and "moo" and I would be proud. At least that got her to laugh off some of the anxiety. You do not realize how proud your parents must have been of you growing up until you have a child of your own. 

So after the 3 person disaster, she went off with her 4 person DD team to practice. I never saw her before she and her team took the floor. I think I held my breath for the whole routine....the AMAZING routine that they pulled off! They had one miss about 45 secs into it, but other than that it was flawless!

Later that day at the awards ceremony they were called up for 10th place. They screamed, I screamed (we all screamed for ice-cream) and I barely remember running over to get a picture of them. Our team had never gotten a double dutch top 10 finish! So our drama dutch day turned out to be one of the best ever. 

Later that day, any jump roper that wanted to cut 6 or more inches off their hair for "Locks for Love" were encouraged to come back to the convention center. B decided that she wanted to and was one of about 35 jumpers that did. 

It was a very proud day :)