I’ve had the pulled muscles, the rips and the pain.
I couldn’t walk for a few days, felt like I got hit by a train.
I still tried.
My mother tried talking me out of it, said I was too old.
I got laughed at and felt the stares, they were all so cold.
I still tried.
The coaches wouldn’t spot me, they couldn’t handle my weight.
Everyone told me that I couldn’t do this sport, that I was too late.
I still tried.
But what happens now? I quit.
Now more flying. No more flips into the pit.
I do my stretches, my body protests screaming a loud no.
I keep going, my heart telling me to do so.
I show my mother my accomplishments, she hates it.
I feel like crying, I feel like ****.
I have no money and no support.
I’m not skinny and i’m not short.
Do I keep trying? My heart says yes, stay strong.
My body and everyone else says no.
Forget them, I’ll prove them all wrong.
I can do this and this I know.
Coach, Judge and Baseball nut Jeff Macrae sends us this link:
The CrossFit Games are now on in Aromas California and there are some BEASTS of athletes there. The individual competition started today with the athletes performing 5 workouts today and the top 16 moving on to the finals tomorrow where they have to complete 3 more! It’s pretty intense and the competition itself has grown immensely as this is only the 3rd year for it. There is even talk of it being televised on VS. next year.
Lawyer CLAY TRAVIS posted an important topic on Fanhouse.
He asks whether NCAA College athletes should be required to set their Facebook accounts to “private”. Or ban them outright as Kent State tried to do before reversing the decision after public outcry.
Virtually every college athlete in the country is on Facebook now. This makes sense, it’s hard not to be on Facebook if you’re under 35, impossible if you’re under 25. But Facebook has become a public relations minefield for major athletic programs across the country. Whether it’s players being kicked out of school for making a threat in their status message (Wake Forest), posting racist comments about the newly elected President (Texas), setting off an internet firestorm over whether or not you actually posted messages on another person’s wall (Georgia) or just having your idiotic responses to quizzes posted all over for others to enjoy (Michigan). This is just the tip of the Facebook iceberg, every program is in danger at every moment of every day. All of this attention and all of this danger raises an intriguing question: Is it time for athletic departments to ban their athletes from having social media profiles on Facebook, MySpace, and the like?
This week the University of Arizona took action to combat the dangers of Facebook, announcing that all of their athletes in every sport must set their profiles to private. Setting the profile to private means that only those people you select as friends can see your profile. Otherwise the profile remains visible to the entire network (generally your college). How serious is Arizona about the new policy? Athletes who don’t comply risk losing their scholarships if their online conduct fails to “reflect the high standards of honor and dignity” expected by the school. …
A new coach arrives at The Rock. Oddly he’s a Brit who seems to have moved to Romania to train. With the name Sasha Belov. The “James Bond version of Bela Karolyi“. And despite his youth, he retired 5yrs-ago.
At the Region 3 Elite Clinic … gymnasts and coaches had the opportunity to work with the judges in a training camp setting. Beam Judge Carole Bunge shows an athlete why she failed to receive credit for her switch side leap, and breaks down what she wants to see in order to give full credit for a switch side.
On a related note, highly regarded Canadian WAG Judge Kathy Stoesz reports only one protest was filed during the entire week of the Canadian National Championships. Either the judges did a great job, … or coaches are not confident enough in their knowledge of the rule yet.
… a strategic approach to teaching kips from the earliest level through to gymnasts training for level 5. It shows the drills and progressions I have seen work for coaches with more knowledge and experience than me. …
