Finding Our Balance Read online

  After getting started with just a layout and then a layout 1.5, I prep for my first 2.5 of the day. And it’s not bad, considering how exhausted I am. Not stuck, but that’s basically on purpose to give my knees and ankles a break. I can tell Polina’s fine with it. She sees me absorb the impact the way I would if I was working hard to stick; I’m just hopping out a little at the end.

  It still baffles me that I can do this vault at all, to be honest. I was only competing the 1.5 a year ago, and the added difficulty alone tacks on a full point to my score. Tenths can make or break you in this sport. I’ve seen girls miss out on qualifying spots by hundredths and even thousandths before, so a full point is a gift from the heavens. Not that it comes for free…I don’t think I’ve worked on anything harder than the Amanar, though once I got it down to a science, it ended up looking better than any of my easier vaults have ever looked. Bouncy landings aside, today is no exception.

  I wish I could say the same for bars.

  For some reason, people have it in their heads that I’m a decent bar worker but what I’m actually good at is faking it. I work hard on my technique and I usually stay on, so normal people think I look pretty, but when you get up close with the careful eye of a judge, it’s still kind of a mess. I mean, I’ve worked a ton on it so I no longer look like a monkey swinging on vines, but it’s pretty clear I’m uncomfortable up there and if I’m not careful, I attract millions of minor form deductions like a magnet.

  Today, the issue is my van Leeuwen. It’s not an easy skill, I guess…from a handstand on the low bar, I have to pike down with my toes on the bar as I swing around back to a handstand position and then at the last second, I let go, using the momentum of the swing to propel me back to catch the high bar. To complicate things further, I do a half twist to face the high bar before I catch. Voilà, the van Leeuwen, named for a Dutch gymnast over a decade ago.

  I’m miscalculating the distance between the two bars. How?! I catch this skill all the time. When I release the low bar on the first few tries it’s clear my swing wasn’t strong enough. My fingers graze the bottom of the high bar, I can’t quite wrap them around, and I slam my knees on the mat below.

  “You need more oomph, Amalia.” Thanks, Polina.

  I start throwing myself hard around the bar, only now my frustration is making me lose my focus and I overdo it a bit, my hands now slightly too high to catch the bar; instead, my wrists bounce against it and I drop to my feet. Better than my knees, but still…not good.

  “Control. Focus. Breathe. Take a second to regroup, and then try again.”

  I can’t regroup. My brain is enraged and no amount of breathing will help me chill. It’s a skill I’ve been able to hit a thousand times before; I’m mad because it doesn’t make sense that I suddenly have no idea how to catch it. Where’s the logic?

  After re-chalking and taking a sip of Gatorade, I let Polina know I’m better. Facing the low bar, I decide to work just this one skill rather than starting from the beginning of my routine. I mount the low bar with a glide kip, cast up into a handstand, and in the nanosecond I hold the position, I tell myself to hit.

  My feet come down on the bar as I pike swing around, and I know a split second after I let go that my hands come off too soon. See what frustration does to you? I forget everything I’m supposed to do in the skill, my legs come apart, my knees bend, and I only get the half twist about a quarter of the way around. When my hands approach the high bar my body is still basically facing sideways and I’m only able to grasp the chalky fiberglass with one hand.

  I can’t hold onto it at all. My body crashes to the mat in a heap, and I think about how I don’t even have control over my fall. When you’re a kid, pretty much the very first thing you learn in gymnastics is how to fall – how to brace yourself, how to roll out of it, how to not get hurt. In case you were wondering, dropping eight feet onto your ass is a great way to get hurt.

  “You okay?” Polina asks, jogging over to me.

  Thankfully, yes. It won’t be much more than a bruise. My legs weren’t at weird angles when I dropped, which is good. I once watched a teammate break her leg after falling leg-first, her own body weight crushing the bone.

  “I’m good.” I stand up; nothing hurts. “Fine.”

  “You’re done with bars,” she says. “Actually, with all routines. Take the rest of the morning off to cool down and condition before school.”

  Fine with me. I thank her and put on my warm-ups before heading over to the treadmill, always a good way to work through aggression. My one saving grace is that Ruby and Emerson were too busy with their own work to notice my meltdown.

  Natasha didn’t miss it, though. I watch her nod as Polina gives her an update about my failure. She catches my stare when Polina’s done and gives me a thumbs up, her way of asking how I’m doing. I give her a thumbs up back as my answer and she mimes wiping sweat from her brow.

  I am physically fine. It’s the truth. I just can’t let my mental game crack like this again.

  ***

  Our afternoon practice is the last we’ll have with the other kids in the gym, so our coaches decide to have us do a mini competition in front of everyone – the lower-level J.O. girls, the boys, and the rec kids, who train for fun and don’t compete – at the end of the afternoon.

  With a full day of school between me and this morning’s bars errors, my mind is no longer in meltdown zone. I hit my van Leeuwen in all three routines in the first half of afternoon practice along with all of my other skills on bars as well. They’re not all perfect, but I’d rather have a few messy skills than crash and burn due to mental errors.

  “Thank you all for your undivided attention!” Natasha yells over the noise of the hundred girls and thirty boys in the gym today. Though they have their own training to focus on, we like to pull them away every now and then as we prep for big competitions, not because we’re really vain and demand attention, but because the cheering helps us get a feel for an actual arena.

  The J.O. girls have all met Emerson, but we’re usually kept pretty separate from the rec kids and this is their first time really seeing her up close and in person. At least half are hyperventilating. The boys, mostly young teenagers hoping to reach level 10 so they can earn college scholarships, are equally enthralled, but more because she’s hot and less because they admire what she’s done in the sport.

  “Today our elites are excited to share their routines with you before they go off to compete at the American Open, the first stop on the road to Rio!” The younger girls scream in applause, but the older girls and guys don’t look thrilled about being forced to leave their own training. “I hope you will all cheer really loudly for the girls before, during, and after their routines so they can be super pumped up for this weekend. Have fun!”

  More applause. My heart flutters. I don’t know why I’m suddenly nervous about doing my routines in front of a bunch of kids who work out at my gym every day, but even though I know this is just a rehearsal, the overall meaning is something bigger.

  We start on vault with no problems. Considering neither Emerson nor I are naturals here, we’re both so solid, so perfectly prepared, we could probably stop training this event and still go out and stick in Rio. Don’t tell Natasha I said that. For real, bless the Amanar for being worth a crap load in difficulty points and for happening so quickly; there’s very little chance to screw it up if you’ve had good training and get a good enough block.

  Bars, meh. No major mistakes for me, thankfully, though it could always be better. But Ruby looked fantastic. Even though she’s not an aesthetically “pretty” gymnast on the event – like me, she’s noticeably muscular, whereas the conventionally “pretty” bar workers tend to be long and lean – she’s super clean, and has a natural swing. People will still call her bars work gross because she doesn’t fit the stereotypical look, but the fact is that she hits her skills better than basically every “pretty” bar worker I’ve ever seen.

  By the time
we get to beam and floor, the younger rec kids – some of whom are only four or five – are over it and I can tell they’d rather be doing their own flipping and flying. Some are actually doing splits and handstands and cartwheels while their teenage coaches play on their iPhones. Total anarchy.

  Even in the mild atmosphere, our routines are fine. Before Ruby does her floor routine she tries to get the kids riled up, which works but only for a few seconds and then they’re back to their distractions.

  My tumbling on floor is a little low-energy, but there’s nothing really bad about it. I just tend to lose endurance a bit when doing a full routine. The passes on their own are solid, but by the time I finish a full 90 second routine complete with choreography and dance elements in addition to the four big tumbles, I’m too winded and my muscles want to go on strike, so I am barely able to get everything around. In a competition setting, the added adrenaline should help, but even if it doesn’t, I’m not in such a bad place that I need to be concerned.

  We line up at the end of the mock meet, which takes all of 20 minutes, and everyone goes wild with applause again before running back to their own activities. Natasha gives notes to me and Ruby while Emerson and Sergei do their thing, and then there’s just an hour left, split into polishing problem skills, one more set of competition routines, and a cool down before we can leave.

  My floor needs the most work, but with so many strong floor workers in the country we tend to not care about it as much as we do my other events, where I have more of a chance at making an impact on this team. Besides, two floor routines within the span of a half hour would probably kill me, so bars it is.

  I make it through a first time with no problems, impatiently listen to notes and corrections, apply them to whatever skill gets picked on, and do it again, following this pattern for a half hour until every skill has been critiqued and fixed. Just make it through, I remind myself. Survive this. This is nothing.

  “Good work,” Polina says with a pat on my back when we’re finally done. “Just do vault and beam, and then throw your tumbling into the pit. No need to kill yourself.”

  Fine with me. It’s the easiest end of practice ever, and after landing my final tumbling pass – a double tuck – into the foam pit, I close my eyes and breathe for a second because I don't have enough fight in me to pull myself back out. Only one more day of torture, and then it’s meet time.

  Tuesday, May 10, 2016

  87 days left

  I honestly don't believe what's happening.

  After a productive morning practice and my last day at school for the week, I stepped out into the rainy spring day expecting Polina in her trusty little Honda Civic.

  Instead, I get Emerson in a brand new BMW 6-series convertible, Ruby strapped into the passenger seat looking like she’s been kidnapped. “Surprise!”

  The "surprise" in lieu of Tuesday afternoon practice is something Emerson cooked up, called "Treat the Elite." One of her old coaches started doing it when she first made elite as a junior, and she kept the tradition going because it always led to good results.

  First we go for mani-pedis, so our nails look cute for competition. Because that’s apparently important? We’re getting the works – salt scrubs and massages – and it’s amazing.

  But then we get to the gym. When we walk into the front office, a grimacing Polina is waiting with blindfolds, which she ties over our eyes. She leads us to the locker room, tells us to put on our Team USA warm-ups, and after a few minutes we hear the John Williams NBC Olympic score blasting through the speakers.

  “What the hell?” Ruby mutters. Emerson giggles.

  One of the little rec girls takes our blindfolds and escorts us out, where – I kid you not – there are three thrones made out of mats in the middle of the floor, surrounded by the gymnasts as well as some of the MGMA parents.

  Ruby raises her eyebrows and wrinkles her nose, her face working hard at betraying no emotions, which right now for both of us is a mix of "are you kidding me?" and "yep, seems about right." Of course Emerson would include public worship as part of her tradition. I catch Ruby look bewilderedly at Sergei, who responds with the most aggressive eye roll I’ve ever seen.

  When we sit down, Natasha sees our faces and breaks into a smile. She walks towards us and claps her hands together, signaling an upcoming speech.

  "Well." She exhales and I giggle. "Thank you, everyone, for taking time out of your workouts to wish our 2016 American Open competitors luck. I believe a few of you have some gifts for the girls here, so I won't keep you. Thanks again for supporting these Olympic journeys and to the parents who set all of…this up."

  Jillian Bergman, a superstar level 10 Natasha is keeping under wraps until she's a bit older before unleashing her in the elite world, bounces over to us with a gift bag. The bubbly 11-year-old mini-Emerson pulls out crowns – like, the kind bachelorettes wear in Vegas with fluffy pink feathers hanging from the sides – and places one on each of our heads. Ruby can't contain her laughter anymore and is now capturing the madness on her iPhone.

  Don't worry, there's more. Custom sashes that read "Miss Olympics 2016." We are bachelorettes winning a beauty pageant. Natasha has tears rolling down her cheeks from laughing so hard and Sergei has an apologetic "I swear this wasn't my idea" look on his face.

  "Ruby, Amalia, and Emerson," Jillian begins, reading from a piece of lined paper. "You guys are an inspiration to everyone in this gym every single day. You are focused, determined, and strong. Even when you fall, you are brave enough to get back up and do it again. Ruby, you showed us that you don't have to give up on your dreams even if you think you miss your chance. Amalia, you showed us that if you work hard, you can achieve the impossible. Emerson, even though you're new to our gym, you are amazing and talented and beautiful and my favorite gymnast ever, I swear, I love you!”

  The crowd laughs at Jillian’s outburst. Ruby and Natasha share a look, most likely about Emerson’s reaction which I don’t see but can imagine it’s one of faux humility. If she had her way, she’d make Jillian bow at her feet and probably, like, wash them too. And Jillian would love it. She should’ve volunteered for that job at our nail place.

  After Jillian sits down, Sasha Watson – another top level 10 who’s a year older than me and clearly embarrassed – brings over small gift bags for each of us.

  “The level 9 and 10 training group pooled our money together to give you good luck gifts before you go,” she mumbles, her face turning red. “We hope you kick butt in San Diego.”

  Short and sweet. We open the little bags to find Alex & Ani bracelets. We each have two beaded bracelets – one red, one blue – and one gold bracelet with a USA 2016 logo charm dangling from the metal. I immediately put mine on and hold out my wrist in front of me, thanking Sasha, who smiles and mouths “kill me” before walking away. I giggle.

  “Get used to that gold!” A parent yells out and everyone cheers. Oh, hey, it’s my parent. My mom and dad are standing in the back of the gym by the office door, and wave when they see I’ve spotted them. I don’t think they’ve ever come to the gym during practice. I hope they think this is how we spend our time on a daily basis, me sitting on a throne receiving gifts and worship.

  Natasha comes back up, ready to break up what she no doubt considers a silly distraction. “We want to let our teams get back to practice, so elite ladies, if you’ll grab your things and follow me to the parking lot, we have another surprise waiting.”

  My parents come with us, and it’s not until we’re walking out that I notice Ruby’s family – her parents and three brothers – are all here too. She runs up to them and gives them all big hugs, and the six Spencers all talk at once, yelling over one another as we make our way out the door.

  There’s a limo waiting for us in the drop-off zone. I’ve never been in a limo, and run towards it. Ruby’s not as impressed – back in 2012, she always had sponsors doing cool things like this for her, and she’s so happy about seeing her family, she doesn�
��t notice (or care) about something as trivial as an extra-long car.