You've heard of the soccer mom, the dance mom and the pageant mom. I'm the gymnastics mom. And to be honest, I've been the soccer mom and a cheer mom. But at this point, it seems like gymnastics mom is my biggest job yet--and really, it's my gymnast that does the hard work.
Looking back, I never really thought that I'd become a gymnastics mom. I was a competitive gymnast when I was younger. I was never great, but I did compete for several years and was also on my high school gymnastics team. Yes, I'm old enough that we still had gymnastics in high school. Looking back to when I was on a competitive team, I remember practicing two hours a night, five nights a week. I don't remember traveling too much for competition, but I guess I'd have to ask my parents for sure.
Once I had girls, I never really expected them to be in gymnastics. I told myself I would never push my girls into the sport, nor would I push them if they decided to start. My oldest daughter took a few lessons, but never really pursued it. She just didn't seem like she was that into it. Now, she is really into cheer leading and wishes that she had kept with the gymnastics if for no other reason than the tumbling. She has also done soccer, softball and cross country. But in the long run, her true love, and the only thing she has really stuck with, is cheer.
My youngest, who is now eight, started taking gymnastics lessons about twenty months ago. She quickly excelled and was placed into the "pre-team" classes. Before we knew it, her coach was talking about being put on the team and competing. The problem? She was also playing soccer and running cross country at school. While we understood that the coach said she had potential, she wasn't ready to give up the other sports. So, instead, we took a "break" from gymnastics. She would work out with the pre-team class one day a week and take a 1/2 hour private lesson on another day. Then, on November 4, 2013, she started working out with the team. That meant three hours a day, three days a week of practice.
The rest of the team had already learned the competitive routines and were working on refining them. So my kiddo was behind. The competition season was supposed to start in January and we were not sure if she would be ready. We took a couple of private lessons to try to learn the routines and she finally did. Unfortunately, the team had already registered for meets and we weren't even registered with USAG, so competition was not going to happen for her. We did attend two meets to watch. This was a big deal. She was able to watch her team mates and see what a competition was really like. The main season starts in August, so we knew we would be ready by then.
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