Hey everyone!

My name is Alix Croop and I am 15 years old. I am a level 10 at Parkettes. I recently competed at JO nationals in Colorado Springs, CO, along with three other teammates, Katie Riggleman-Thomas, Tiffany Shepherd, and Taniah Wann. This year was my first time qualifying to JO's.

On Thursday May 1st, we flew into Colorado after a short practice in the morning. When we got there we drove around for a few hours trying to find our hotel (not fun). When we finally got to our hotel we went to our rooms and unpacked for a little bit, then went to Zio's Italian Restaurant for dinner. The next morning we received our workout apparel for 10:00 practice with our region. We got a warm-up jacket and pants, a black t-shirt (for practice and the meet), a white t-shirt, a pair of shorts, and a leo. I did pretty good at workout. We only had to make 1 or 2 routines on each event. Right after workout we received our competition wear which included, warm-up jacket and pants and a leo (region VII's leos were light blue). After that we went back to the hotel to change and then left to go sightseeing. First we drove to the top of Pike's Peak making a few stops on the way up to take pictures and get souvenirs at the gift shops. Once we were at the top, we! got out of the van to take pictures, and then jumped back in really quick because there was a bad ice storm. Our next stop was the Garden of the Gods, which is a "garden" of huge rock formations. We walked around for a while and took tons of pictures. We even climbed a couple of the smaller rocks!

Saturday morning Tiff and I had to get up early to train again. Training went pretty good, but I had some trouble breathing on vault and bars. My coach told me it was because I wasn't used to the altitude. After training that day Tiff and I stayed at the arena to watch our other two teammates, Katie and Taniah, compete in the first session. They both did very good! That night Tiff and I ate at the Macaroni Grill for dinner, then went back to the hotel to curl our hair and just relax for our meet the next day.

Sunday morning I ate breakfast at the hotel then got ready for the meet and took my curlers out. My dad and I went to lunch, then headed to the meet. I only got to see Tiff's last two events, but from what I heard she did great on the other events. My friend from Hill's, Cassie Martin, competed in that session too. She had an awesome meet, and won her age group!!! CONGRATS CASSIE! At the conclusion of their session I went to the back gym to meet with my region VII team to get our team picture taken. After pictures we warmed up and then marched out. My first event was bars. I hit my free hip, giant full, reverse hect, kip bail, then rushed my toe shoot sit-up and couldn't do a kip out of it, so I had to do an extra swing. I finished up my routine with a step on the landing of my dismount. Next was beam, where I almost fell on my switch leap one armed back handspring, and had a few wobbles here and there, but I made my routine!!! lol On floor I did one o! f my best routines ever and I made both of my vaults. My scores on each event were, bars-8.85, beam-9.1, floor-9.55, vault-9.325, and my all-around was a 36.85. I placed 7th on floor and I was 18th all-around. I know I could have done better, and I wish I would have because there were about 50 colleges there, but maybe next year! After the meet Cassie came back to our hotel and went swimming with us, it was tons of fun! We flew home early the next morning, and met our parents at the gym. I was happy to be home, but I missed the beautiful scenery of Colorado already!

Thanks for reading my journal!
<3 Alix =)