Apr. 19, 2004

Greetings Everyone!

All I can say about last week is that it was the most amazing, exhilarating experience ever! As some of you may know, we competed at Nationals down at UCLA last weekend and we had a history-making weekend to top off our history-making year.

The first day of competition was Thursday's prelims. We started on vault, and then moved to bars where we stuck every one of our landings! After that, we moved to beam, and then to floor. We were a little behind going in to the last rotation, but the floor team rocked, helping us to a first place tie with Florida, and qualifying our team to our second Super Six appearance ever! How exciting! The wonderful thing about this year though was that we weren't going to stop at that- we had a plan for the next night and were determined to follow it through to the end.

The night before the Super Six competition we got together as a team and decided that this was our time to shine- why shouldn't we be at the top? We worked so hard for so long, and our team had so much heart and determination- we felt we deserved everything we got. Going in to the meet on Friday, no one was nervous or frightened, just excited to showcase our routines and prove to everyone how hard we worked for this. We definitely could not have asked for a better competition. Instead of getting nervous and shaky, our entire team got bigger and better on the Super Six night. We started off on beam with 6 stuck dismounts! After that, we went to floor where we kept the momentum going. Vault was cool because we had 4 stuck landings, and also special for me because the coaches let me vault for the first time all season! Last, we went to bars where we did everything we could to finish the meet strong. Glynie got to compete for the first time in a while because of a bad ankle sprain, and she looked absolutely stunning. I think we were the only team to make every single routine of the weekend.

We ended up third place in the final rankings- tied with Alabama, and trailing Georgia by only .075. UCLA ended up in first place. They looked amazing, and we will strive to catch them year after year.

The next day, Flurry, Natalie, and Lindsay competed in event finals and did awesome. It was exciting to watch Flurry and Lindsay compete their last routines ever. On Sunday we went to Disneyland as a team and had a blast before it was time to go home and get back to work!

I would just love to say thanks to the coaches, the underclassmen, and the rest of my fellow seniors for helping make this last year very special. I know I speak for the seniors when I say we will miss doing gymnastics very much, but we are super excited to continue our involvement as alumni and cheer on the team in the coming years.

We would also love to thank all of our fans and parents for supporting us and helping our program grow bigger and better each year. Thanks everyone!!!

- Kendall