Third Class Sport

Here I am, sitting alone against a wall in gymnastics practice, and am using the stretching block as a desk for my laptop. You might wonder why I’m not practicing. That’s because there is just too much homework that is due tomorrow. But I really want to workout because today my coaches, Mili and Lei, are actually making everyone be productive. There are four groups today rather than the normal two. One group is tumbling on floor, having fun doing front tucks and baranis off the mini tramp. I just saw one of my teammates land flat on her face during a front tuck. I don’t want to be mean or anything, but that was kind of funny. There was a really loud smack when her face hit the mat, that the wrestlers on the other side of the blue tarp heard that for sure. She is a diver too, so I guess she is used to a 1-½ somersault in which one enters head first into the water. I had a few face smackings too, but face smacking on a gym mat isn’t nearly as painful as a body flop off the diving board. Once I hit the water so hard, I ended up getting big purple bruises on my leg. Haha, right after that incident, a guy walking past me just tripped on a mat, I actually laughed out loud for that one. I know I shouldn’t be laughing because I’m pretty clumsy myself. I even trip over my own foot sometimes. I guess that’s ironic because gymnasts are supposed to elegant and agile.
Gymnastics is so entertaining to watch, much more entertaining than any other sport I know. Sports like football, basketball, and track can be exciting to watch, but it’s only exciting when there is competition. After all, football player only tackle and run, basketball players only run and put the basket into a hoop, and runners just put one step in front of the other. Gymnasts on the other hand, risk their lives everyday, tumbling sky high without landing on our heads, doing stunts on a four inch wide, four feet high beam, running as fast as we can towards a stationary object, and swinging high on a set of bars with bloody hands. Many ordinary people can’t do stunts as most gymnasts can, while many people can throw a football, shoot a basket, and run. I don’t have anything against such athletes, or anything, it’s just that I think more people should appreciate gymnastics as a sport, rather than thinking it’s too easy to even be considered as a sport. Many don’t realize how much it takes to be an exceptional gymnast because of how easy such stunts can look. An average competitive gymnast has to spend around 20 hours a week in order to keep up with new skills and conditioning. Unlike any other sport, it is pretty much impossible to keep up with skills even after a short vacation. It’s actually hard to keep in shape too. I never thought in a million years I would say this, but I actually miss those brutal conditioning days. When I was doing club gymnastics, I was actually in shape, even though I didn’t believe it then. Now, only a year after I quit doing club gymnastics, I have gained about 10 pounds, and am not in condition whatsoever. I thought I would be able to condition on my own time after I quit so that I would stay in shape. However, I wasn’t as disciplined as I thought. Even though we condition in ILH, it isn’t at all how it used to be. I honestly don’t think that we’re going to get much stronger with their conditioning. Even though I miss some aspects of competitive gymnastics, I don’t regret quitting at all. I now have more time to myself, rather than spending most of my time at the gym, being able to try new things at the same time.

Goodbye

I remember my barefoot Barwick days during my first year at my scool. I was in fourth grade, and I remember that my biggest stress was gymnastics, something totally unrelated to school. Time sure flew by fast, and now, as a junior, there is not one day that goes by totally stress-free of school. I just wish I could have that remote from the movie ‘Click’ and rewind back to those happy elemntary days.
After our school carnival, (the best carnival ever!) I now realize how precious everyday here is. However, working up to carnival actually went by really slowly. Every now and then we had meetings, sign painting, the required 12 hours at the tank. (I was the booth chair for white elephant.) Because it took so long to prepare for carnival, it was surprising to experience that the Friday and Saturday of carnival went by too fast. Maybe it went faster than it usually did because this was the first year I didn’t even have fun time to spend at the carnival. I had a diving champs on the Saturday of the carnival, so I had to do all of my shifts on Friday. So before I knew it, we were taking the traditional walk around carnival. When Mrs. Ashford told us that it would be an emotional experience, I honestly didn’t get it. I didn’t understand how a walk around an empty carnival ground would be emotional. It’s not like that would be our last carnival ever. Only until the actual walk did I understand, I’m not saying I started wailing or anything, I’m just saying I understood what my dean was explaining to us before. It symbolized the ending of the big event of our high school career and the beginning to our end, if that makes any sense. We will never again experience what we would experience, which actually is pretty sad when I think about it.
Right when carnival was over, everyone was talking about Junior Function, which is the next big event in our school year. It’s actually pretty stressful deciding who to take and who to take pictures with, especially when it costs so much too. During all of this, we had to schedule for our last year at my school, order our class ring, fill out our NHS forms, schedule our college conference, and study for our most important year. Ah, just thinking of all the things I have to do during the next few weeks is stressing me out. I am excited to leave Hawaii and go off to a college in the mainland, (hopefully somewhere nice and warm), although I wonder how much I would miss my friends and family here. I might not even see my friends after senior year, for we will all be moving on in our separate ways. I will probably no longer live with my sister or parents ever again after I graduate, I will no longer see them everyday but maybe only a few times a year. In the beginning of my Junior year I was so excited to moving on with my life, but now I am seeing the depressing side to all of this, which is not making me very happy. Maybe I should stop before I get really depressed.