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.

Ho, ho, ho!

Two months and two days later, a blog post!

I've spent the end of this summer and the fall trying to mentally distance myself from gymnastics when I am outside of the gym. I'm still coaching. The kids are still cracking me up. I'm also now in the judging arena, which is a weird little universe with rules spoken and not.

So why the mental distance?

1.) I'm trying to imagine myself as a real person. When people ask what I do for a living, I intentionally place coaching as the second or third job on the list, not the first.

2.) I fear that by being too into the sport, I will both not be a real person, and will be disappointed.

Said disappointment would stem from the girls' competitive success (or lack thereof). You see, our kids are no longer the afterthoughts. I'm not saying they walk into the gym and the competition falls to their knees and begs for mercy, but they're good for several medals, some first places, and a team award.

Do I enjoy the success? Heck, yeah. Not in a creepy stage mom way (or so I hope). I'm proud of the kids. But I was proud of them even when they were little disasters forgetting the Level 5 floor routine.

A shift, however, at the beginning of this season. I felt myself less understanding of the cute blunders and the bent knees and the inevitable 7's on bars. One of the Silvers was at the end of a fantastic beam routine when she fell doing a silly, froofy turn. Even the judge looked upset that she fell.

"What did you do that for? We took that out!" I said as soon as she walked over. And thus she hid in a corner and cried as her 8.75 was raised.

I did not feel good about this.

Less of a tolerance for the all of the above makes me a better coach. I know that. But I just...I don't know. I just can't reconcile myself with the idea of being that person, the one who makes a kid cry because she made a mistake. The world didn't end. The wrath of God didn't rain down upon us as she fell from the beam.

So these months have been an effort in stepping back and saying, What is all of this really about? Still working on that answer.