Narrative

So Close
By: Brittany Plate
Looking up at the crowd seeing my moms worried face looking down on me, lights shinning on me while the sweat drips down my face, I start to get paranoid. I step up to the blue, soft bouncy floor, as I walk to the middle and hold my position for my routine. I take a look at my three judges sitting at the table waiting for them to give me the ok to start. Thoughts start running through my head, and the judges don’t look nice. One of the judges raises her head to signal that she is ready, while the other two are still filling out the score sheet from the last gymnast. My arms are starting to get tired as I’m still holding them above my head waiting for the music to start. I take a quick look at my team mates and then finally my couch. My eyes start to fill up with water, I’m getting really nervous, my couch whispers “You’ll do great Brittany” as a couple of my team members shout “Come on Brittany, score a 10!” I know that I have to at least score higher than a 7.8 to get our team in first place. Finally after what felt like twenty minutes all three judges nod their heads giving me the “Ok” to start. I count to five, give my coach the ok to start the music. I was off! Nobody was going to stop me, I practiced my floor routine everyday for the past week. I knew it by heart. It was the last competition of the season and I had to end it with a bang.
That was the start of what I thought was going to be the best day of my life. Ever since I was five years old I have been in gymnastics. I guess you could say that I started young. It was my favorite thing to do every week I looked forward to going to class and at home I would make my mom help me practice my cartwheels. In second grade, my gymnastics teacher told my mom that I had something special, I was very limber and was ahead of all the kids my age. She bumped me up to the next level. This couldn’t stop me. Going to gymnastics class was not enough at age eight I felt like I could be doing more so my mom signed me up for a one on one class just me and the couch! Now I was going two days a week. By the time I was ten I was going to gymnastics everyday to practice. Well I wouldn’t call it practice, more like fun. We even ended up making our down stairs living room a gymnastics floor by buying soft mats. By the age of ten I was going to my first meet.
I remember being the youngest and having all the other kids look down on me, even my own team mates. The meet was at home so I was comfortable with the surroundings. I was so excited. My family was there to watch me. My first routine was on vault, this was my favorite. All I remember is running as fast as I could and jumping on the spring board and over the vault I go. I landed it perfect. Looking over at the judges I await my score. I take a glance up at my mom and I see her smiling from ear to ear. Finally I hear 8.2. My mom starts to scream, and my coach is jumping up and down. It takes me a few seconds to realize what I just did. As I start to run to my couch, I can hear her saying “ I told you, that you could do it”. The rest of the day went amazing. On beam I scored a 7.8, bars a 8.0, and floor 8.9. From that day on I knew that gymnastics was what I wanted to do. It was the only way that I could express my self. It was something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I had to set a goal and reach it.
The next day at practice I had a meeting with my couch. She told me that she wanted me to join the traveling team and go to different states to compete in gymnastics meets. But because I was only ten years old my mom decide that I couldn’t join and that I had to stay in school. This just meant that I could travel around the state of Minnesota, but could not travel outside. All through middle school my dream was to be in the Olympics‘. I would watch the gymnastics videos and want to be just like them. I knew I was good enough I just needed to get grow up faster and talk my mom into letting me travel outside of the state.
By the time I was fourteen, my mom finally gave in and let me join the traveling team. It was during the summer so I wouldn’t have to miss school. In the 3 months of summer I travel to 15 different states. I received eight first places when combining all my scores from bars, vault, beam, and floor. Three second places and two fourth places. The trophies were amazing, every chance I went home I would put them all over my room. I couldn’t ask for anything better to do with my life.
I just turned fifteen and the summer was coming up again, time to start my traveling. I have waited all year for this. Our team was going to try and make it to 15 more different states again. My body was starting to get drained and taking a turn for the worse. I was at my last competition for the summer doing my last routine. All I needed was a 9.0 or higher to win. My last routine was the floor, which is my favorite because its all tumbling and it’s a good way to end the day. Or so I thought…
I hear the music come on and for a split second the room gets really quite and super cold. I pull myself together and before I know it I’m doing my routine. I pass right through the first floor move getting ready to start my second. As I make my way over to the corner, I take another quick glance at my couch. I know this is the biggest part of my night. I have to accomplish a Randolph back handspring, back tuck, back ariel spring. I see the tape in the corner across from me which is where I need to land, not one foot out. I take a deep breath and start to run, Randolph back handspring, back tuck, back ariel CRACK! I hear the sound of my ankle just make the worse noise I have ever heard. I try and finish my routine. Taking a few steps back getting ready to do my front flip I jump up, tuck my legs and flip. I landed it! The sweat is dripping off my face from all the pain I’m in, my body starts to shake as I fall to the ground. My couch comes running up to me, as I lay there not knowing really what just hit me. All I could keep thinking was that’s I lost, I didn’t win. It’s the end of everything.
That day I lost everything. I shattered my left ankle. I know have three screws and two plates. The worst thing I did that day was shattered my growth plate. The doctor told me that if I go back to gymnastics and I take one wrong land I could never walk again. From that day on I have never been able to do gymnastics again. A couple things here and there but nothing more. My dream was shattered. I felt like I was going through retirement at age fifteen.