Jan. 26, 2006
This week was a good one. Coming off of a big win at our "Pink Out" meet was a big confidence booster. School started on Tuesday for Mizzou. And I don't know about the rest of the girls but I am in some hard classes. Biochemistry, physiology, human nutrition, and sign language 3, practicing, traveling, and working all on the same plate is a lot but I think it is all manageable.
We left on Thursday morning at 6:45am so we did miss two days in our first week of class. It was a little difficult but that would be the most we would miss all semester. Knowing our meet against Centenary and Air Force would not be like competition in our Big 12 conference, we realized that focusing on our own score instead of the other teams was our focus. Getting a high "away meet" score in the beginning of the season is great for our rankings (a confusing system that many people do not understand). Like I said, 6:45am is early for anyone; therefore, the team was a bit tired in our day of travel from Columbia to St. Louis to Houston to Shreveport.
We arrived to Shreveport around 3:30pm and relaxed a bit before dinner. The next morning we made a team trip to the Louisiana Boardwalk. It was cute with all of the shops and such. Most of them were outlets, which made it very difficult not to buy a few things. But my pair of shoes and shirts for half the price was worth it. After leaving there we had two hours to get ready for the meet. It was nice to have some down time to relax before lunch and not to be rushed. Lunch at Olive Garden was wonderful and then we were off to the meet in the Gold Dome, literally. It was a big beautiful gold dome but the ceiling inside looked like a white painted kaleidoscope. At first it made me dizzy but after a while I grew accustomed to it. We all started checking out the equipment and then came the shocker of the floor. We are used to a bouncy floor at Mizzou and to us Centenary's floor was a little harder than what we were used to. I know a lot of girls were worried about making their passes to their feet, including me, but I think most of the kinks came out and left in warm ups. Warms up went well, a few issues here and there on floor but nothing that wasn't worked out.
Our team started on bars, a solid event for us. Ashley started us off with a solid routine, which led to a strong bar finish. Ali exhibitioned for the first time this year and shined. I definitely cried when she landed. She is one the hardest worker on bars and to see her work her way up is the most encouraging thing to see. Beam was next. Jodie started our girls off with a strong 9.75. Everyone else followed aggressively. I even got my career high, a 9.90! Once beam was over, I know in my mind floor started to worry me. I was just trying to make my routine to the best of my abilities. It was a huge mental challenge in our team's aspect that it was very different than what we were used to but everyone stayed strong and held their confidence together in not having any falls and producing high scores. We ended on vault with a huge bang, high scores all around. Altogether the meet was amazing. The next morning; however, was not so amazing. Waking up at 6:00am, leaving at 6:45am, and traveling for 12 hours with 5 hours of sleep underneath our belts was rough. But eventually we got home and my butt took a nap. Next week we get a full week of workouts to prepare ourselves for our next meet next Sunday at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Wish us Luck. Go Tigers!!
-Amanda Pezzullo- aka: Pez