Memoir

I remember walking through the gym doors of Romeo Dallaire every Thursday for practice with the trio I was in with my sister and our friend Celine. Practice started at 5:00 sharp every Thursday so we could get as much work in as possible before practice ended at 8:00. That was the first group routine I’ve ever done in competitive and trust me when I say this: I miss it a lot. I like to consider that season from 2011-2012 my "glory years". We were undefeated throughout the entire season and even won Provincial Champions at the end of the year.

Back to practicing.. Thursdays were the only day I practiced that I didn’t dread. They were usually tough, sometimes dragged on but they were always fun, if that makes any sense. Although this is what practices were like, we always worked our hardest and this always showed though at competition. Normally we would run for a bit, do some strengthening exercises, stretched and then practiced our routine before we got side tracked on something else like talking about celebrities or something like that. It was always like this until competition week. Whenever we got down to our last practice before competition, it was always running our routine over and over and over again until we would collapse.

Especially before our first competition together in December..

I competed in individual and group, so I had 4 routines to compete while the other two girls only had one. They were there to cheer me on as I competed and as soon as I was done competing, it was time to start trio practicing. Being at the competition all day was tiring but it was worth it for the sense of pride I had when walking onto the floor for the first time was incredible. We had practiced to no end to make sure our routine was perfect, but it wasn’t. We made a lot of mistakes but it still felt really good knowing we tried our best and we were successful for our first time competing. It felt even better when our score came up and we realized that we managed to get first place against the trio that had been practicing since June. But it felt amazing, almost emotional, when the three of us stood first place on the podium, receiving our medals as even cheered for us. I think that moment was the reason we were so successful for the rest of the year.

It was March or April of the next year and we were getting ready to compete again. Since the first competition we had bought new balls fixed the routine, competed and even did our routine for a smaller club out in Steinbach. The reason this competition was so important is because clubs from all over the country were coming to Winnipeg to compete. Although we were still only competing against two other groups, I was competing against 25 other girls and Celine had a cheerleading competition on the same day she had to come from. This competition was the definition of stress. There was so much going on, our trio was becoming over-bared with pressure. After Celine came back from her cheerleading competition and I had finished competing individual, we had about half an hour to practice, change and do anything else we had to do. Instead of walking on to the carpet feeling pride like we usually did, it was mostly nerves. There were a lot of people watching us, twice the amount of judges and we didn’t realize until 2 minutes before competing that we were actually breaking a few rules in the Code of Points. But we still went on anyways and to our surprise, we did amazing despite our nerves and under preparedness. We walked off with people cheering for us and our coach was ecstatic. I remember her telling me how expressive I was and how strong our routine looked and it made us feel a lot better.

What ended up happening was Celine had to leave to return to her cheerleading competition, my sister had made some other commitment and had to leave and I was at the University of Manitoba with my coach for the rest of the day. I had waited anxiously for the sheet to go up with our scores and placement and when it did I could not believe my eyes. We ended up first place with a score or 14.275 which was AMAZING. When my coach and I saw it at the same time, it was emotional because even though we were all under a lot of stress, we still managed to pull through and get an amazing score. I had texted my sister and Celine and told them what our score was and although I couldn't sense their tones through the phone, I could imagine they were ecstatic too. The next day we recieve our awards (picture above) and went home to rest before the net practice.

We found out the next practice that the previous competition was our last time competing together because Celine was in Toronto for the next competition and it was heartbreaking knowing that our season was done but it was amazing remembering the hard time, the good times and the failures and sucesses we had togther. Me and my sister ended up competing a duo for the last competition which ended up ok. \it wasn't the same without Celine and even though we tried to have a group the next year, it didn't work out. I still bring up the memories with my coach and sister and I'm so thankful that I've had the chance to experience something so amazing for that year. That is something I'll never forget.