Taking Back the Title?

03

Jade's POV

I'm back!!! After recovering from my surgery, I'm tumbling better than ever. It's my first practice back tonight in the Cali and I'm really excited to see everyone again! I have an hour until practice, so I eat a pear and walnut salad with some chicken and then get changed into my favourite black Nike Pro shorts and a light blue Nike sports bra. I tie my hair up in a high ponytail and put in a blue sparkly bow.

I throw on my Nfinitys and head out the door.

I walk into the gym where Eddie is sitting with the team. "Hey, Jade!" he says. He introduces me to the kids who didn't know me and tells me to sit down. "So, as you all know, Smoed will not be easy. You will cry, you will want to do nothing but go home and sleep, but that will not make you a World Champion. We learned that last year, as all the returners can tell you. So, this year, we are stepping up our game. Which brings me to my next announcement. Orby is back!"

Orby steps into the gym and we all scream and run to hug him. "Okay, why don't you all warm up and then we'll do some fun stunting?" he says. The team starts to run some laps – this is how you know it's going to be a fun practice when you're not starting with bear crawls – and then stretch.

"Hi." A little girl who can't be much older than twelve says to me.

"Hi! What's your name?"

"Malieya. You're Jade, right?"

"Yep!"

"Cool, you're from Hawaii? I've always wanted to go!"

"Yeah, it's awesome there. It's so cool how you can go from mountains to beach just by turning your head."

A young blonde girl comes up to us. "Hey, Tawnie!" Malieya says.

"Hey, Malieya! You're Jade from Hawaii, right?" Tawnie says.

I laugh. "Yeah, that's me."

"That's awesome! Do you fly or base?"

"Base. I'm actually terrified of heights." I laugh again. These two girls seem really sweet.

"Oh, I was too when I was seven, but I got over it and now I'm hopefully going to be a Smoed flyer!"

"Hopefully? Aren't you on the team?" I ask, confused.

"Oh, well we have too many flyers on the team, so Eddie is using Cali Camp to figure out the roster. Which sucks because all of the flyers are so nice and I don't want to see any of them go." She frowns.

"Oh boy." I don't really know what to say...good luck? I hope you make the team and some other girls get cut?

A boy I recognise from last year walks over to us. Malieya and Tawnie start chatting about going to Starbucks for Frappuccino's after practice. "Hey, long time no see," Enrique says.

I smile. "Nice to see you again!"

"You too. How's your leg?"

I tore a bunch of muscles in my leg last year doing a double. "It's much better."

"That's good."

We continue stretching and I see Enrique staring at me out of the corner of my eye. That's a bit odd, I think. Oh well. It's probably just because he hasn't seen me in almost a year.

After we stretch, Eddie and Orby put us into groups. I'm in a group with Maia, Aneesa and Malieya. We try out some double ups and full up switch ups to lib. We are really far ahead so Malieya suggests we make a mini stunt routine. After ten minutes, this is our stunt: full up switch up to heel stretch, then Malieya pulls a bow and arrow. We do a low to high, then a high to high and then double down from scale. We log roll to flat back and then re-load into a double up grip, double up to arabesque, and then Malieya does a back inversion with Maia holding on to one of her hands. (A.N - it's all good if you didn't understand that, just a little stunt I made up :) ) We show Eddie and Orby our stunt and they say it's really cool. Eddie takes a video of the team doing a basic double up to lib to post on Instagram and then we move on to tumbling.

I warm up my standing tumbling first. Two to tuck, two to layout and then I throw a handspring handspring full. Eddie tells me to work on standing fulls so I go over to the tumble track. I throw a standing tuck and then start some twisting. It's going really well! I look over at the floor to see Madi throw a double. "Yeah, Madi!" I shout. She smiles. I see Enrique looking at me again. This is getting a bit strange. I shrug it off and pull another standing full.

A girl with dark brown hair joins me on the tumble track. "Mind if I share with you?" she asks.

"Sure, go ahead!" I step off the tumble track and let her get her mark. "What are you working?"

"Whip fulls, you?"

"Standing fulls."

"Cool! I'm Cami, by the way."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Jade."

She throws a round off whip to check her mark and then lets me go. I pull my standing full and fall backward. Eh, at least I'm not under-rotating. Cami throws a whip layout. "Your tumbling is really good!" I say.

"Thanks! So is yours!"

We tumble for another twenty minutes, chatting in between passes. After I throw another standing full, Cami jumps down from the tumble track and pulls over a red block from the side of the tumbling floor. She points at it and says, "You should try it off of this block, you don't need the tumble track."

I sigh. "Fine, I guess." I step up onto the block and take a deep breath. Here goes nothing. I pull my standing full and land perfectly. It's easier to land on the solid floor than off the tumble track onto the squishy mat.

After another few minutes Eddie calls us in. "Okay, Smoes, great practice today! Bring running shoes next practice, funditioning starts!" – we groan at that – "I think this is going to be a great season!"

Eddie says a prayer and then we do our hands in. "One, two, three, SMAMILY!"

I head over to get my Smoed bag from the summer last year. I take a drink of water and throw on a red  t-shirt –so I'm not walking out in a sports bra- that says I cheer, what's your superpower?  with the superman logo on it. I take another sip of water and head home to take a long bath and sleep.

A.N.

thank you for reading! let me know what you think of this chapter

-mare<3