Done

Yay, our last ilh team competition is over! Only one more week till ILH championships and then it's over for good! (Too bad I still have a bunch of finals to study for...) Gymnastics only goes up to ILH championships instead of states because there just isn't enough teams to have a state competition. I think it's just hard for many schools to get access to a gym, especially because it is so costly due to the fact that there is a limited amount of gyms in the first place. I know Pac 5 has to pay something like $700 to practice at Mojo Gymnastics.
I love how ILH gymnastics is so much more laid back than regular gymnastics. In ILH gymnastics, I have the freedom to actually have my butt on the floor without getting yelled at, we don't have to condition (although I miss that), and we can practice without someone crying everyday.
Gymnastics is right next to the judo/wresting area, where constantly hear the wrestlers practicing hard. We can hear loud thuds of bodies slamming onto the floor in unison, while the coach yells the counts, "One, two, three! (whack)". While all of this is happening, I look around and find that my teammates are often just standing around. It's a great place to get away from the stressful gymnastics. I skipped gymnastics practice because of my homework load yesterday, and Chel, one of my teammates told me about the interesting practice story. She said that her sister was giving out those sugary strawberry belts at practice, and for the whole workout people were running around chasing the girl with the strawberry belt. Amazingly, this story didn't surprise me, for such events occur quite often. One day, our coach considered playing games for the whole practice without working out. However, we couldn't find dodgeballs, so the workout turned out into an open workout, where you pretty much do whatever you want.
Even competitions are very unstressful. In regular gym, the gymnasts compete individually, while in ILH gymnastics, we compete as a team (all the individual scores add up to a team score). Also, there are only three teams, so there isn't that much competition, especially in varsity. In varsity, Punahou has 6 gymnasts while Pac 5 and Kamehameha only have one. So everyone can fall twenty times and it wouldn't matter because we would win. I find these types of meets a lot less stressful because there isn't any pressure to be perfect and beat everyone. As my teammate's mom said, "It's much nicer to see the girls laugh when they fall off beam, rather than cry." Even though I have never cried because of a mess-up, it goes to show how much pressure meets can be.