First, I spend hours upon hours getting my hair teased, face caked, and skin tanned. Although my nerves haven't quite settled into the pit of my stomach yet, or the thought of performing in front of thousands of people have not set into my mindset. I started to realize, that I've been working towards this one day for eight years of my life, since my third year in elementary school. How could I have put so much effort into one day? But then my right foot steps place onto the blue mat, and that's when I learned that's what I did this for. I did it for the rush, and I did it to wave my left hand in front of the adoring crowd of people. With every single one of them yelling the name of my team and even my name. It's almost impossible to see my parents in the blur of colors that flooded the sea of spectators. All I could see was my five coaches that had been my coaches since I was eight years old cheering me on, telling me  “you’ve got this” and “It’s now or never”.
While the only thoughts that tend to surround inside my head are “Don’t mess up” or “Don't embarrass yourself”. I had so many thoughts swarming around inside of my brain like an angry bumble bee. I knew that if I were to mess up now, it would be all over twitter and my team would absolutely despise me. Another thought that I kept logged in my mind was that this my performance was scheduled to be on ESPN in no less than a month. All of these memories of my coach yelling in my face, telling me I’m not good enough for her, that nobody is good enough for her. But yet all I ever wanted to do was impress her with something, anything. It might sound harsh telling people about how my coach breaks TVs with her own body parts, or when my coach throws chairs at all of us as her athletes. Sure, my coach might not be my feet most favorite person in the whole world, but she got me to the place right am today. She got me onto this worlds floor, she brought me the fame of being on the best team in the state of Michigan, and she brought me some of my most closest friends.
While still standing on the floor motionless with nineteen other girls with the same thoughts going through their heads, I realized something. I realized why my coach pushed us so hard, it wasn't just me that she pushed, she pushed this whole team to victory, I realized that I wanted to be pushed to victory. Sometimes at practices I wouldn't try as hard as I thought I could, sometimes I wouldn't punch my motions until my arms ached. I was told daily to try harder, we were all told to. That's when it kicked in, when the music started. Its was the loudest thing I've ever heard, but it was all so amazing at the same time.
Later on after we had awards, we sat on one of the smallest stages I've ever sat on. They expected ten teams filled with twenty athletes each to fit on this one stage. It was all crazy and impacted. I sat in the middle of my two greatest friends with their hands gripped tightly in mine as they called down placements. They called down tenth, ninth, eighth, seventh, sixth and then asked the last five teams sitting to stand up. We all stand up, so anxious to hear our results. “This could be the best day of my life” I thought, “I could be a world champion today”. They called down the list fifth, forth then told all the teams that had been called to exit the stage, still sitting on the floor with my death grip, I began to sweat as heavily as I ever had in my whole life, I was so incredibly hot my body was radiating heat at that moment. They called third place “Brandon Allstars!” and we screamed, we all screamed because we knew it wasn't our name. But then, the worst words I have ever heard flew through the speaker. “Second place” with what seemed to be the longest dramatic pause ever, “Vizion Allstars twenty-twenty!”. We cried at that moment, we cried so hard that we couldn't even feel our tears rushing down our faces like an overflowing waterfall. We had gotten second place when we were so close to victory. I learned that as hard as I worked that day, wasn't hard enough to win the title of first place. I still go to the gym everyday to this day, just to sit on that floor again, but this time, we will be called first.