Items
topic_interest is exactly
gymnastics
-
2021-08-11
There is No Good Decision
My daughter is very athletic. I don’t make that statement lightly. I do not lie and I will look you in the eye and tell you my son is not an athlete. But my daughter was born with a natural ability for sports. Anything she tries, even recreationally, she excels at. When she was 3, she began gymnastics and in first grade, she joined the competitive team. It’s not just that she’s athletic, she works extremely hard. So making her sit out an entire season due to COVID was not an easy decision. I do not regret it, but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard. When this season began in May, we cautiously allowed her to return, fully masked. The cases were down and the coaches wore masks. We decided the risk was worth it for her mental health. Then the COVID restrictions were lifted June 15. My daughter became the only one in the full gym with a mask. We hoped for the best and have been lucky so far. But the cases are exploding. They are higher now than this time last year. What do we do? All her friends are from the gym. Truly. She doesn’t have any close friends at school because most of her time is spent at the gym. Can we take that away from her again? She worked out every single day of quarantine to stay in shape and she did. Can we look at her and basically say her work was for nothing? There is no good choice. What is more important? Protecting her physically or giving her the part of her life that secures her mental health? At the end of last week, I was seriously considering pulling her as the daily cases rose to 1,000+. However, in a move that shocked me knowing the clientele and position of the gym on this entire pandemic, even her gym has reinstated masks for all coaches. This made me feel maybe 5% better. Her one on one session is also from 8 - 9pm, which I was bummed at at first - so late for a kid! But I quickly realized we’re the only ones in the gym that late, which lowers my anxiety a bit. So we’re going to take the risk for now and allow her to continue going. I just hope it’s not a decision we regret. -
2021-04-19
She’s Back and I’m Terrified
After 400 days to the day, my daughter walked back into her gym. A competitive gymnast who has been training with the same gym since the week before she turned 3, this has been a long year. We are privileged in the sense that the hardest decision we had to make during the pandemic was not related to jobs security, hunger, or even health (beyond keeping ourselves from COVID). Our hardest choice was not allowing our daughter to return to her gym to train when they reopened in June. My husband and I knew COVID was just beginning. We knew the spike would come and the health of our family wasn’t something we were willing to risk, especially because our jobs allowed us the luxury to work from home and distance. At first, we made case rates dropping our marker of when she’d go back. Then, with the announcement of the vaccine, we decided to wait until our household was vaccinated. By the end of March, the adults of our household were vaccinated and our local case count had dropped considerably, to an infection rate percentage of 1.4%. Still, we wondered “should we just wait until she’s vaccinated?” But she’s 10, there is no vaccine being publicized for her age. How long can we keep her from her life? It’s not just the training. It’s about mental health. We’ve kept her physically safe, but she’s 10 years old and hasn’t seen a single friend in person for almost 14 months. She hasn’t shown any signs of a mental health crisis, but even if she isn’t showing anything, this has to have taken a toll on her. It was a difficult and scary choice, but my husband and I decided her mental health and emotional health are worth the risk. She is so happy. She’s had two one on one sessions with her coach and we are all shocked (and relieved) that her daily solo workouts EVERY SINGLE DAY for 400+ days now paid off. She not only kept all her skills but learned enough her skills to advance to the next level. I know her coach is shocked. I don’t think she really believed that a kid would work hard enough on her own to keep in shape. I know my daughter is very proud and very relieved to know she can compete again. And the timing is perfect - the new season starts in May, so she’ll begin in a new level with other girls she knows who also leveled up. She never acted unhappy during quarantine, but since going back, she’s seemed lighter and happier. Still, the two times she went were one on one. The beginning of May will see her going back full time, three practices a week for ten hours a week of practice. I’m happy they’re letting her keep her mask on and that the coaches are wearing masks but I’m still nervous. It’s so hard to send your kid into a situation that may lead them to contract a deadly illness. But it’s also so hard to keep your kid in a bubble. I never in a million years imagined I’d have kept my child home for 400 days. I’m a public school teacher, I’m the first person to tell you the importance of socialization. But in a pandemic, I guess my mothering deep instinct to my child overpowered anything else. I hope and pray with everything in me that we don’t regret allowing her to go back. I hope we are turning a corner in CA and that a vaccine for kids arrives soon so I can feel slightly more relaxed. -
2021-04-14
Can You Ever Tell If A Decision Is Right?
My daughter has left our neighborhood less than five times in the past 13 months. I am not exaggerating. Now that the positivity rate in our area is 1.5%, we cautiously allowed my daughter to accompany me on a one mile run. You would have thought I’d taken her to Disney World. She was happier and more relaxed than she’s been in months. But she’s not a runner. She’s a competitive gymnast who hasn’t set foot in a gym in 13 months. She’s trained virtually with a gym in Northern CA and has worked out every single day. But we know it’s not the same. We also know that it’s time to create the team for the next season. It was time to contact her gym. We can keep promising she’s coming back but at what point is it just empty words? After a lot of prayer and internal debate, we texted her coach and said it’s time for her to come back. As you can see, she was initially scared at the idea, but that was quickly replaced by excitement when she found out she is really going back. But I have a pit in my stomach. Is it safe? Her coach isn’t vaccinated. Will my daughter be one of the children who contract it and have dire consequences? Or will her brother if she brings it home? How long can you keep a kid in a bubble? She already missed an entire season. Her mental health is so important, we know going back is going to be so amazing for that. But I am still so worried about the physical. One thing that this year has shown me is that I am an adult. I mean, obviously, I’ve been an adult for 22 years. But this year - protecting not only the safety of my children but my over 65 mom and in-laws. Advocating for the health of my students over politics. It’s like the pandemic has forced me to see that I can’t look to anyone to make adult decisions, it’s me. I’m the decision maker and these decisions can be life and death. I’m the adult. COVID has stripped that security we all had (probably foolishly). I don’t think I’ll ever feel safe again the way I did before this all began. So fingers crossed that my daughter’s journey back into competitive gymnastics is one that we can make safely. -
2021-01-22
Night Sprints
We have a balance beam upstairs. Since quarantine, we’ve added a trampoline and a tumble trak. All the years of vowing to have my daughter only due gymnastics at the gym has ended because she hasn’t set foot in the gym since March 2020. Even a few months ago, we were talking about having her return in the fall, but with the spike that started in October, there was no way. I want to support her the best I can, because she is passionate about her sport. Even though she is never going to be an Olympian or collegiate gymnast, she does well at our local and state meets and continuing to practice everyday (even on the days she complains) gives her that light she needs at the end of the tunnel. The knowledge that when this ends, she can return to the world of competitive gymnastics and all her friends on her team is one of the things that keeps her going. But I’m not a gymnastics coach. Until quarantine, I didn’t know what half the skills were. And we have no bars, and no vault. But there is one thing I can do - run. I figure the practice videos, (thanks Paul Hamm and Amanda Borden), the twice a week live zoom practices (thank you Kazio Acrobatics & Gymnastics, who, though not being my daughter’s gym and being 400 miles away, graciously extended their online classes to anyone in the country when this all began), and the at home training schedule of conditioning and skills her gym sent in March takes care of the floor and the beam. Bars is a lost cause, I hope some muscle memory remains for her. But the vault, which is her highest scoring event, is powered by running. I love running, and her coach used to tell me that gymnasts notoriously hate running, but it is a skill that really helps with vaulting. I figured I may not be able to do a back handspring, but I can teach my kid to run. So three times a week, I make her run. She is NOT a fan of the mile on the treadmill, but she seems to genuinely enjoy sprinting. On Friday, she was bummed because it got dark before she could make it out to sprint. So to make it fun, we figured we’d just sprint in the dark with lights. Was I secretly trying to train her to hold a baton? Maybe. Or maybe I’m just trying to keep hope alive for the kid. She’s 10, and before Covid, the longest stretches she has had from the gym is two weeks, and that is only when we go on vacation. So she basically has lived at that gym since the summer before she was 3. If she wants to continue competing, I will do anything I can to keep those muscles in shape so she can return. And if I end up training a new running partner in the process, what a win. -
2020-03-07
Last day I was a Coach
This is a photo inside the gymnastics gym I used to work at. It was taken shortly before everything started to shut down. I didn't know how long the pandemic would last, I didn't think it would change my life as much as it did. I've worked with these kids and their families for years; we consider ourselves a big family. The strain the pandemic put on our friendship was immense and I fear it may have broken some. The gym re-opened (although at the time all forms of gyms were still forced to stay closed) and this made a dilemma that I didn't think I'd have to face. My situation was confusing and has caused me a lot of anxiety as families were asking if or when I was coming back. I couldn't give them an answer because my family needed me. My older family members were effected the most by all this. They are all high risk and couldn't do the things they wanted to like go to the store or the movies. I had a choice; leave my family out to dry and go back to coaching or take care of my grandparents and others. I of course chose my family. But I still miss the families and the kids I coach. I deal with that everyday when I see their progress of Instagram. Some of the family's doubt the severity of the pandemic, which makes me even more stressed because they could very well be speaking ill of me for the way I've been handling all this. I fight this inner doubt everyday because I really care for the kids I coach and I want to be apart of their progress, but at the same time with so many family members in the medical field and people that now depend on me I can't justify leaving them by themselves or potentially spreading it to them. -
2020-06-08
No State, No Regionals
My daughter was having the gymnastics season of her life in 2020, placing in every event at every meet, and even reaching #19 on America’s Top 100 for vault for her level. One of the last places we went before quarantine in March was a gymnastics competition and I remember being uneasy at the crowds and the fact that the girls used the same apparatuses and equipment throughout the day. No one else seemed concerned, and when I asked if State Championships were still happening, everyone looked at me like I was insane. Of course, two weeks later, everything shut down. She has now been away from gym for over three months - the longest she’s been without her coaches since she was 3 - and both State Championships and Regionals were cancelled. No word on whether there will even be a 2021 season. To keep up the morale of the team, her gym sent information about a virtual State Championship, where gymnastics could submit videos from previous meets and judges would watch and score. I submitted without telling her, because I wasn’t sure what to expect. When she received medals and a champion t-shirt in the mail because she scored 1st All Around for her level (first in every event) she looked happier than she has since quarantine began. It’s not USA Gymnastics sanctioned, so it doesn’t “count,” but to my daughter, it is as real as any in person meet and was exactly what she needed to have closure to what had been an amazing season. We don’t know when she’ll go back - her gym opened three weeks ago, but with numbers rising dramatically in our area, the risk isn’t worth it for us. Competitions are fun, and my daughter loves her sport and is extremely dedicated, but a healthy and alive daughter is way more important to us than medals in a coffin.