What happens when you've been at a compulsory competition for too long

Humming with the music turns to making up lyrics for the music turns to covering your ears/eyes, trying to make it go away.

Mentally judging the other routines turns to counting how many girls are left in the rotation. Is there really a whole team that still needs to compete floor while everyone else is done? Really?

The host gym has this weird thing where parents can make shout-outs to their kids, which are read out loud by the meet director during warm-ups. It's all pretty generic, like, "Dear Alex, We love you! Good luck from Mom, Dad, Timmy, and Skittles."

When you've been there for more than three hours, you start to hope that the shout-outs will sound like this:

Some [girls] have all the luck

Yesterday, I had a lesson with one of the Level 5's. Cute child, well-behaved, did a nice job.

Today, my boss texts me to say that the child has lice.

...

Floor music fun for your Wednesday

I really like this instrumental. I'm sure that somewhere in the NCAA, someone is doing a techno remix of it.

Plus, there are pretty colors!

You, me, and an 8.3

So.

The IGC team placed second yesterday against some heavy-hitters. They won medals and so on and so forth.

Except their scores barely made it to the 8's, and occasionally, the 9's.

I judge now and I've been around gymnastics long enough to know an 8.5 routine from a 9.0. I watched a girl from another team do a spectacular vault and stick the landing. Height, amplitude, form -- it's all there. 9.3, 9.4, I thought. The score went up. 8.65.

Kathryn did a floor routine without a fall or a missed requirement. Not a 9.0 performance, but anywhere between an 8.6 to an 8.8, I thought, because that's what she normally scored.

8.0. Boom. Roasted.

She asked me what she'd done to lose 2.0, and I had to think about it through the meet. Finally I said, "I think the judge took off points for literally every step you took."

It's things like this that make kids lose interest in gymnastics. Inexplicably low scores when they do solid routines. A two-tenth difference in scores between an okay routine and a girl who was clearly much better. And as I looked around the gym, I could see that it wasn't just us. It was every team. One coach said that the floor judge did not give anyone on his team credit for a certain requirement. A dozen kids. Not one?

I don't understand judging so close to the chest. If you give someone a 9.0, and the next girl is better, you have plenty of room to go up. Hence the 9.025, the 9.050, the 9.075... Give the best their due, but don't kill the entire field in the interim.

But in the meantime, as coaches, we have a few choices. We can get pissed at the scores. (Check.) We can get pissed at the kids. And/or we can try to keep them afloat.

"I'm not even going to get an 8," Amy says worriedly before her floor routine.

At this rate, no, she won't. "Look, I don't care what you get," I tell her. "Do a nice routine and don't worry about it, okay?"

The words were by no means a magical inspirational salve, but I wanted to make it clear: sometimes, there's only so much a gymnast can do, and you have to let the rest go.

Conversations with a gymnast that I have coached for ~3 years

"Do you have a job?" nine-year-old Colleen asks.

"Yes, I have several," I say, and list them for her.

"Oh," she says. "I didn't know that you worked here."

"What did you think I do, hang out?"

The tell-tale smile proves that I'm right.

Internet memes, or how to be a terrible role model

There's many a practice where the older girls are giggly to the point where they can't get a thing done. They crack each other up. The tiniest phrase or word or stumble sends them off. Then they have to repeat/reenact it countless times.

Coach P. ignores them and works with the younger girls. Greg shakes his head. Sometimes I yell and the entire gym goes silent. Then they continue, but in whispers.

Other times, well...

They're practicing their beam routines, fairly productively, and it slips out of me: "Imagine Tebowing in a routine?"

Boom. Done. All of them more focused on their routines than they've ever been besides maybe at States. "I got it, I got it!" Natalie, the oldest, yells.

"Me, too, right here!" Kathryn says.

Kasey milks the pose for an extra moment.

Yep. Coach Instigator.