I received good news yesterday that my youngest (daughter) Tasha won the gold medal as overall champion in gymnastics (elementary level) at the Palarong Pambansa currently going on in Iloilo City. This is another feather in her cap because this time she's competing with the best among the regions all over the Philippines.
Jaja (my wife) and I unfortunately were not around to witness her victory. Jaja was in Cebu for a training program, while I was in Manila due to some prior commitments. But the important thing is Tasha won it anyway.
And to think that about a month ago I had planned on pulling her out of gymnastics for good because she didn't seem to be interested in it anymore.
It happened during the National Ranking of gymnasts. She was in the top ten who were to be ranked and they had to go through the usual 4 events: beam, bars, vault and floor,after which they would be ranked based on their performance.
Before she was to do her routine at the vault: a Tsukahara, she had an attack of the yips and started sobbing and pleading with her coach just to do a simple layout. Because she was not focused she ended up with an incomplete routine and got a zero for the vault. Although she got the highest score at the bars and second highest at the beam and floor in her category, the zero was enough to pull her to tenth place.
When word got around that I was intent on pulling her out of gymnastics,she must have been told by the other mothers to convince me that she was still interested and that she wanted to continue. She sent me a message via text stating precisely that.
When I finally got to talking to her I told her my reason. I pointed out to her that if she was to keep getting cold feet before any event she might get injured. Specially now that the skills required of her are more demanding and more dangerous. So I told her that if she was going to continue she had to pay attention to her coach and dedicate herself to practice so she wouldn't get the yips in the future. I also warned her that if I heard from her coach that she was slacking, I would pull her out.
It appears my threat may have worked.
I don't know what happened during the Palaro competition. I don't know if she made mental errors again. But am sure that Tasha must have been back in her competitive frame of mind because she won!
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