Previous Terps Tumble Talks

Hey All,

This week was an exciting week! We are starting to see everything come together on all the events and with it all starting to 'click' we intend to keep the intensity up. We all know that we need to be well prepared for season, because once it hits it is hard to add or change a lot.

On Beam Vicki switched up our assignments a little this is week and closed out the week with a fun "Partner Pick-A-Card" game she made up. We had to pick a partner, warm up all of our skills, and then drew our assignment from a stack of cards. We had to pick a card from the 'skill' pile as well as one from the 'number' pile and then between the partners stick the number of the skill that was picked. We had to pick a total of 4 times. It changed things up a little and made it fun since you never knew what card you would pick. Floor is coming along well. Almost everyone put a routine on the hard floor this week. It was nice to see that everyone just knew that they would hit. The choreography looks amazing...once again, a shout out goes to Russell. Vault also made improvements over the week. We started stacking the mats up to make sure that once we get to a meet we will be capable of doing the vault onto a high hard surface. Gretchen's 10.0 vault is improving everyday and its amazing how she can make it on a landing surface well above floor level. And as for Bars, well, this year it is going to be the event to watch. Release move after release move, major dismount after major dismount. This year we have a lot of depth and it's comforting to know that there are so many girls the coaches can choice from to get the job done.

To finish the week off we did the Challenge Course that is located behind the Recreation Center. It was a good team bonding activity as all of the assignments were geared to making us work as a team to come up with strategies to pass every task we were given. A couple people were a little nervous about doing the climbing activity due to the height, but with a little motivation from our coaches and the team, we were all able to complete it.

The funniest activity had to have been the last of the day. We walked to the opposite side of the course to basically just see a wall, with nothing on it. Little did we know we would have to somehow get our whole team over it by lifting and pulling eachother. Each person was only allowed to lift 3 times and only 3 people were allowed to be at the top of the wall helping to pull others over. Everyone else was just there to 'spot' incase someone fell. After planning whom we wanted to go in the first two spots and also the last two spots, we started lifting people over the wall. It went smoothly and we got through almost everyone pretty quickly. When we got to the end there were only two people left standing on the ground... myself and Mo. And...this is where it got tricky! Everyone else had the help of at least two people lifting the person up, and now, we only had one. So, I used Mo's hand as a table and got pulled up most of the way by the three girls who were up top. But, I had to basically dangle off the end to allow Mo to use my legs as a rope so she could then also be pulled up. Of course, our plan was brilliant and it worked flawlessly! I'm not going to lie though, it was a little uncomfortable for me, but in the end it was worth it, not to mention it was just another way to see that we are all in it for our teammates. All in all, the rope course was a lot of fun and a good way to learned the value of teamwork. We all know that each of us working together is always better then one person working alone.

Check out some of the pictures that the coaches took while we where participating in our many games. Some of them are really cute.

Well I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving and...thanks for reading!

~Candice King~