Love for the Sport

Chapter 7

"We are going to split up into four groups and go to each event, but first we will warm up."

At this gym, there were two big floors connected. One blue and one black. Cece and I walk into the black, springy floor and wait for instruction. A tall, older girl walks up and introduces herself.

"I am Sadie. I am a level 9 here at Pure Excellence and I am going to show you the warm up!"

She turns around and starts stretching. When we get to splits, the coaches start walking around,including the tall man and the smaller woman with the accent.

"What are they doing?" I ask Cece.

"I think they are checking for TOPs athletes" She whispers. We were on our left leg split, and Cece and I were all the way flat. I later found out that we had something in common, flexibility. We were flat in our middle splits, left leg and our right leg. And for bridges, we pushed our shoulders all the way over our hands and straightened our legs.

"Do you know a lot about gymnastics?" I ask Cece.

"Not a whole lot. But a little. What about you?" She looked at me.

"No. Nothing. I did one bring a friend class with my friend Avie and that's it!"

She looked at me in awe.

"Then why are you so good?" She let out a giggle.

"I wouldn't say I'm good!" I said sort of silly.

"1...2...3...4...5..." The woman counted girls off in groups of 10 and sent them off to the events while the others waited in the lobby for their turn. Cece and I went to bars.

"I've never done bars" I looked nervous.

"You'll do great." She smiled at me.

We had the tall check in man as our evaluator. He stated what we had to complete on bars to make the team and what we needed for TOPs.

"For level 4 team, you will need a front hip, shoot through, mill circle, leg cut and a back hip circle under swing dismount."

"WHAT" I said out loud.

All of the little girls in my group turned around and looked at me.

"Oops" I said giggling. The coach laughed.

He continued. "For TOPs, on bars, you will need to be able to complete 20 half leg lifts, 10 no swing pull ups, 10 levers and 5 cast handstands. TOPs skills include kip, clear hip, squat on. Kip cast handstand on the high bar, giant, fly away dismount. Now I realize this is very advanced, but we believe in you. And know you have the potential."

The coach smiled. For some reason I feel like he directed the TOPs criteria to Cece and I. Why? We were the youngest and smallest trying out. Boy, I had no idea what I was in for.