Take One for the Team

Chapter 20: First Day of Nationals

"Wake up Julie it's time for Nationals!" It's my dad. The funny thing is that I never remembered going to sleep the night before. In fact, the last thing I remembered was the convention center. I guess I was just really tired.
"Julie we have to leave in twenty minutes. Go get dressed and then get something to eat."
I put on my blue San Diego Speed Skippers uniform and then braided my hair. I was so tired, but so excited!

***

"Julie you have to eat something," my dad said.
"I'm not hungry," I replied.
"You're going to be hungry in an hour and you'll be out of energy. What do you want?"
"Nothing," I grumped. Then I smirked. "Except ice cream."
He opened up my cousin's freezer and inside was a container of vanilla ice cream. He opened up the fridge door and inside was a bottle of chocolate syrup.
"Here. Eat the ice cream. At least you'll have something in your body."
"Is there any whip cream?" I asked with a smile. He opened the fridge again and pulled out a can of whip cream.
I created my ice cream sundae breakfast creation and took a picture of it to send to my friend Hope.
Breakfast of champions! Wish me luck!
I said. She responded almost immediately.
Break a leg!

***

The convention center was packed even though it was only 7 in the morning. There were about four times as many jumpers as there were the day before. I found my team, but down my bag, and joined the warm up circle.

There was a parade of athletes at nationals, just like regionals, except this time it was about 20 times longer. I'm guessing that there were about 80 teams. It took about and hour for all the teams to come in. Since our team name started with S, we were close to the end and had to stand in line for forever.
After the parade of athletes a girl sang the national anthem, and then Nationals started.

The first event was thirty second speed. The boys went first, which took forever, but soon enough it was my turn.

The buzzard buzzed and I started jumping. I went faster and faster and seemed to be doing really well. I didn't miss and ended up with a score of 70.

One minute speed actually went pretty well. I went as fast as I could in the begging but had to slow down because I felt sick near the end. I looked at the scoreboard and saw that my score was 120. Not amazing, but definitely not bad at all.

Relay and Medley were the same as always. I did ok, so did the rest of my group, but there was no way that we were going to place in the top ten for those event because the other teams were just so fast!

Then there was three minute speed.
One of the best jump rope teams in the country is called the Cary Superskippers. They're really good at speed, and freestyle too. When I went up for my heat, I looked around at the other 24 girls in the stations around me and saw two Cary Superskippers. Maybe I could watch their paces and try to match mine to theirs.
The first girl was kinda far away and it would be hard to look at her and match my pace to hers. The second girl was really close, only two stations over. I watched her warm up, and she was amazingly fast.
"Go Renee!" her teammates called as she practiced. My jaw literally dropped as I watched her jump.
The timer beeped and I started jumping. I watched Renee and tried to keep her pace.
She's actually not going that fast. I can go faster.
I tried to jump faster than Renee and then felt unusually tired and started coughing. Hopefully we were close to the end.
"45!" The timer called. Only 45 seconds! I had over 2 minutes left! I held in my cough and kept looking at her feet trying to match her pace. I was still going about the same speed as her.
I kept going that speed until the timer called one minute and thirty seconds, and then I started coughing again. I slowed down a little. I was almost as fast as Renee. Not really.
By the time the timer reached two minutes, Renee was going about twice as fast as I was. I tried to speed up, but my lungs really hurt. I kept going faster and faster, as fast as I could, and missing.
"2 minutes 45!" the timer said. Last fifteen seconds! I pushed to go as fast as I was at the beginning, but I just couldn't. The timer beeped and it was over.
I looked over at my scoreboard. 300! Not great, but a personal best and way better than I did at Regionals. I guess that pushing it in the begging had payed off.
I looked over at Renee's scoreboard. 407. She had gotten over a hundred more than I did. Wow.

That night awards seemed to take forever. The only people who placed were Joey because there weren't a lot of people in his age group, Jake because he was really good, and Lexi because she had worked really hard on speed.
3 of the 20 of us placed.

But there was still routines starting the next day!

Hey guys!!! Sorry I haven't updated in a while but I was at jump rope nationals just like Julie is. I know that that chapter was a little short but I promise that there is exciting stuff coming very soon!!!
💙💙💙
julie_anna21