2021 Australian Gymnastics Championships

I was currently sitting impatiently in the car on the way to the stadium, when I recognised the big football stadium that sits right next to the gymnastic stadium. My heart started beating fast, I was so exited as we drove closer to the stadium! I could just feel myself ready to burst, i had so much energy I could even feel my heart beat! As we drove into the car park, I took out my athletes tag and hung it around my neck as quickly as I could, i was glad I got my athletes tag when my sister was competing or else I don’t know how I could go in! The moment the car stopped I swung open the door and grabbed my stuff in a hurry and waited for my mom to get her stuff, as my mom was walking me, I really just felt like running to the entrance but I sadly had to walk. It felt like a really long time before we reached the entrance, as we were walking up the stairs I saw all the gymnasts from the previous session, I also spotted some Victoria people but I didn’t wave, I just smiled at them and they smiled back. As we reached the entrance to the backstage warming up room, my mom gave me good luck wishes and a good luck hug, I waved as she walked away. Soon I was alone outside the entrance, I walked into the entrance hallway and there was this security lady, she just asked to see my tag and let me walk through. The warmup room was huge! There were the acrobatics and the Rhythmic gymnast all in the same room, I was overwhelmed! My mind went blank for a second as I just stood there and looked around, my eyes were searching the room for the Victorian coach and my group, not long after I spotted them at the side. I speed walked over to them and put down my Victorian bag next to the others, I then greeted the coach so she knew I was here. She told me to warm up by myself until Katya, who is the only group member who hasn’t arrived yet, comes. Since the others had already warmed up, I just started quickly, but soon after I was told to warm up, Katya arrived and we did the warm up together. Half way through the warm up the coach told us to stop and just get our group balls ready for routine practice, she told us that we were going second and that we only had 10 mins before podium training. Podium training is basically where you have a certain amount of time to use the mat that you’re competing on the do your routines and practice your throws. The 10 minutes of practice before the podium training finished quickly and soon we only had a minute before we did podium training. As we were walking out onto the competition mat for the podium training, my tummy started to get some butterflies, I was getting a bit nervous, as we were getting closer to the competition. Soon we were practicing our routine, we kept dropping some of the throws and our coach was getting a bit annoyed, when our podium training was up we went back into the warmup room. We were then told to get changed into our leotard as there was only 30 minutes before the competition started. When I got back I was getting super nervous and more exited, there now wasn’t that much time before the competition would start. When everyone from the group was back we went over our routine and repeated the things we dropped, and then it was time, time went by so fast, as the competition started our coach gathered us around to have a group chat before we competed. It was time to walk out into the competition space, we were all super nervous as we walked to the waiting place. After the first group there was Acro, I didn’t watch it because we all had to focus on doing a good routine. During the routine, I felt really energetic, I also didn’t feel nervous while performing. After walking off we were quite happy, we had no drops in the routine, but we still thought we could do better in the second routine. Our coach told us to overstretch and not to tire out ourselves since there was a while before we did our second routine. It was pretty chill, since all we did was stretched and talked. Going on for the second routine was definitely less nerve racking, since all my nerves were let out during the first routine. We were happy that the second routine had no drops, our coach was happy with both our routines and congratulated us. Since we were done with our competition we went and changed out of our leotards and into the Victorian uniform, we then just ate our food and waited till all the other groups had finished. After everyone had changed and finished, they told us who won backstage before we went out and received our medals. Overall I had so much fun and was really happy with this, this was such a good first nationals!