Porifolio Paper #3 Narrative

So Close
By: Brittany Plate
Looking up at the crowd, seeing my moms worried face looking down on me, lights shining on me while the sweat drips down my face, I start to get paranoid. I step up to the soft bouncy blue 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 teammates and then finally my coach. 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 ten!” I know that I have to at least score higher than a 7.8 to get our team in first place. Finally, after what seemed like twenty minutes all three judges nod their heads giving me the “Ok” to start. I count to five, and give my coach the “Ok” to start the music. I was off! Nobody was going to stop me, I had practiced my floor routine every day 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 every day to practice. Well I wouldn’t call it practice, more like fun. We even ended up making our downstairs 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 teammates. They didn’t think that I should be competing and most them felt threatened. The meet was at home so I was comfortable with the surroundings. I was so excited, even though everyone had their doubts. I kept thinking that this was my time to shine. All those years of practicing were going to come out today. I was going to prove that it doesn’t matter how old you are; everyone deserves a try. I kept looking up at my family, everyone 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 perfectly. Looking over at the judges I awaited my score. I take a glance up at my mom, and I see her smiling from ear to ear. I couldn’t take it anymore, I knew I did good, but this was the first time I have even been to a competition. 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. This was amazing, I no longer had to prove myself because in one event I have already shown that I’m ready. As I start to run to my couch, I can hear her saying “ I told you, that you could do it”. There was nothing now that could stop me. I was on fire! 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 coach. 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 three months of summer I travel to fifteen 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 knew this was what I wanted to do but I was still so young and I couldn’t keep up with the energy. I found my self getting tired. The worst part of it all was that everyone depended on me. I couldn’t mess up, I was the best on the team and always the last person to go so I could pull our team through. I tried so hard to keep a smile on my face, but gymnastics was turning into something that I no longer enjoyed. It was turning into almost like a job with a lot of responsibility. 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 it’s 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 coach. I know this is the biggest part of my night. I have to accomplish a Randolph back handspring, back tuck, back aerial 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 aerial CRACK! I hear the sound of my ankle just make the worst noise I have ever heard. The sound makes my stomach cringe! The pain started rushing through my body, as 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 coach comes running up to me, as I lay there not knowing really what just hit me. All I could keep thinking was that I lost, I didn’t win. It’s the end of everything. I didn’t want this to be it, my team needed me!
I lost everything that day. I shattered my left ankle. I now have three screws and two plates. The worst thing I did that day was shattered my growth plate. My left foot is now never going to grow. The doctor told me that if I went back to gymnastics and I land wrong on my ankle, that I would never walk again. From that day on I have never been able to do gymnastics again. This was probably both the worst and happiest day of my life. Gymnastics was my everything and I couldn’t imagine what my childhood life would be like with out it. Gymnastics was starting to come to the point where it was no longer fun. I had to be so serious. It crushed me every time when I would walk out to start a routine and I had to fake a smile. Its not that I wasn’t grateful, I just think I was to young and everyone wanted me to be so perfect that they forgot I was still young.
I miss gymnastics now, its really hard to look back at all the memories and think that I can no longer do my dream. I still do a couple things here and there but nothing more. My dream was shattered. It felt like I was going through retirement at age fifteen.