30 weeks 5 days

I'm so in love with you! Yesterday was the first competition for the your Formation Team, and it was fraught with disaster. You know exactly what happened, but to sum up for those who don't. First thing one girl got strep the morning of the competition. Second to compound the fact that she was missing she was a line leader in nearly every element in the routine. Third this was the first time for most of the girls to skate at another rink let alone a competition, and there were atleast 8 falls in the program from girls who never fall. Fourth the ice was much harder than the girls home ice arena. Lastly, the girls went first in their group right after an "ice make" to cap off the event. Despite all of these factors you focused very professionally on the problem. A. Some girls probably didn't have their skates sharpened recently. B. They need to be accountable for their mistakes because yes the ice was hard and slippery, but not ALL of the girls fell. C. When you feel foreign ice skate more cautiously.

You refocused the accountability back to them for their performance. If you start blaming something else besides yourself you will never fix the problem. Yes you realize that the ice was PARTLY to blame for the performance, but you cannot set bad precedence for your team by placing blame on an intangible.

I was, and am still so impressed with you. You will coach a truely great team one day it may well be the girls you have now and the coaches who get these girls after you will thank you. The finest performance of the day was yours although I know I am the only one who saw it.

To put things in perspective for all of the people reading this. A girl from the team just above Loris fell 1 minute into a 3 minute routine and knocked out a tooth, root and all, and chipped another and nobody knew it because she got up and skated the rest of the routine swallowing mouthfulls of blood. That is the level of dedication a 13 year old can have to her teammates. Nobody would have blamed her if she would have come straight off the ice. Her team would have lost but nobody would have been upset. Instead they got second. Truely unbelieveable.