Feb
2020

Gymnastics and our family is winding down…

I had a sleepover with my bestie Olivia on Friday night! We had so much fun!

He said

Where last week was fun because of the long weekend and the luck of getting four straight days off with my ladies, this week was all about getting back to the business of the regular rigamarole. I worked from Tuesday, straight through to today. While the week flew by in a heartbeat, it didn’t leave a lot of family time in between with all the regular routines we have in our week. Emelia is two weeks from her first competition, so she is full-on in prepare mode. She’s feeling really good about her preparedness, now it’s just down to cleaning and tightening up every last detail.

Danielle and I were talking and it’s hard to believe that in six weeks the competition side of her gymnastics career is coming to an end. She’s worked all year to prepare for two competitions and they fall four weeks apart next month. While they will still practice for another couple months to the end of June, it’s hard to imagine she will be focused post competitions. And with that her gymnastics career will be over and we will be a little wistful as it was such a huge part of our lives for the better part of six years, and competitively for four.

She definitely won’t be walking away from competitions and athletics going into Cheer, and we’re excited to see if that gives her a renewed sense of purpose and connection. The part that made the decision to leave gymnastics easy for her was the toll it had taken on her body. It’s funny how often once Emelia was in competitive gymnastics we saw and heard stories of girls eventually having to leave the sport for the amount of stress it was putting on their bodies. So as much as we will miss this part of her identity, we’re happy she’s going out having gotten to the level that she wanted to, and before injury or permanent damage decided it for her.

We found out this week that the week we requested for our first week-long camping trip over the week that Canada Day falls is approved which is great considering we had to book it without knowing in order to not miss out on getting a site. Every week that goes buy, gets us that closer to the camping season and I could not be more excited about returning to that neck of the woods and Arrowhead Provincial Park which is our second favourite park in Ontario. As for the first, we have to hope that this summer will allow us to get back to Bon Echo and we can make that week work as well as August gets a bit dicier at work. We’ll cross our fingers and hope the stars align.

She said

This week by all accounts was pretty quiet and low key for us. Emelia took a day off gymnastics this week to give her back a break so she could focus on training with her coach on Wednesday. I am not sure if we chatted at all about the changes that happen after Christmas for Emelia and her team. As Emelia and her teammates returned for their first training session post holiday break the parents received an email from the owner of the gym saying there were some major changes coming for Emelia’s team and training. Her much loved coach because of demands in her last year before she moves to graduate school meant she would have to reduce her coaching hours as there were direct conflicts with training and her new class schedule.

This meant that Emelia would only be guaranteed to have Alex coach her one day a week and the other two days she would be moved to different coaches. Tuesdays she is training with the head coach and the team that trains a few levels up from her current level. This has pushed Emelia hard on that one day of the week, training with girls who are multiple levels above her. She actually loves training with this coach as she is very hands on and great with corrections, something very important so close to competition.

Emelia right now lives for Wednesdays because this is her only day with Alex. Alex knows the girls routines and what needs to be done to be ready for competition. And then there is Sunday, the day of the week Emelia used to love, the gym is a lot less chaotic as there is only competitive teams training but this is the day where there is NO consistency with training. She and her teammates are bumped between coaches causing a lot of miscommunications. Add in that most weeks Emelia is training with much younger gymnasts that are two levels below her training level. Its a bit of a crap show. Not a great end to her training in gymnastics for sure.

With that we are thankful for the Sunday’s that Alex is able to work with the girls because we are less than 2 weeks to competition, and at this point it is all about polishing routines and correcting small things to minimize deductions. Emelia feels pretty good that she is ready for competition. All we want is for Emelia to leave gymnastics with her head held high, strong scores and a great sense of accomplishments. Not going to lie we are going to really miss seeing her compete gymnastics but we are very excited to see her try another sport, one that highlights her strengths and pushes her outside her comfort zone.

The next few weeks will be all about gymnastics and enjoying watching Emelia compete for the last time next month. It will be bittersweet for sure.

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