This past weekend was nationals in Atlanta for Carissa's cheer gym. Overall the teams did VERY well - better than we have ever done before in Atlanta. Many of the teams "cheer down" to hopefully walk away with a trophy. Since this form of cheating is unregulated, it happens regularly. Our gym has better morals than to allow our teams to do this, so we usually walk away with placements somewhere in the middle.
This year, however, most of our teams did a little better than 1/2. One of our youth teams took 2nd place out of about 16 teams. Several of our teams took 5th place out of anywhere from 15 to 20 teams. That is commendable at such a large competition. Carissa's team had several problems on Saturday which placed them lower going into Sunday than they would have liked. They were in 10th. Their performance on Sunday was much cleaner, but the still weren't able to move up. So they scored 10th out of 12. That was disappointing and the kids were sad, especially since just two weeks prior they had a flawless routine at a competition.
The excitement for the weekend could best be described as "girl drama." One of the girls on our higher-leveled youth team made a mistake in her tumbling and put her hand on the floor (a deduction). She threw a tantrum on the stage. She immediately started crying, sobbing, and stomping around the stage. She refused to throw some of her tumbling and to stunt. It was quite the spectacle and caused her team many points in deductions. They came in last place.
The other cheer drama story was on the oldest squad of kids. On Saturday, one of the flyers was dropped and she decided to slap - yes, slap! - her base. This slap was followed up by the words, "Put me back up, b!*@$!" The base, obviously, was not happy. So she retaliated. Here is what she did: On Sunday, in the middle of the performance on stage, she was holding that flyer up. She said, "I don't feel like doing this anymore" and dropped her hands to her sides, making the flyer fall FLAT on her face on the stage (a deduction). She then refused to put the flyer back up into the stunt to finish that part of the routine. Another girl that was nearby tried to step in to put the stunt up and the girl who dropped her hands pushed her out of the way so she couldn't help. Basically, to get back at this flyer, she sabotaged the routine! Instead of dealing with this flyer who slapped her one-on-one, she decided to make the rest of the 34 kids on the team suffer. It could have cost them an invitation to the World's competition that they were hoping to get. Thankfully it didn't, they still got the invitation (called a bid), but it did cause them to drop a place in the standings. Wow! Needless to say, no one is very happy with these girls right now!
So that's my Atlanta story. The only other thing to note is that I no longer feel as though I ever need to stay at a Ritz Carlton. We stayed at the Atlanta Ritz. It was just another hotel and was overpriced. We were required to stay there, though.
Oh, one more thing - we rode the elevator at the Westin hotel across the street from the Ritz up to the 73rd floor! They have a restaurant up there and the elevator is an express. It is a glass bubble on the outside of the hotel and at night time it's beautiful! I loved it! =)
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