Farewell, Sweden!

The last two days of our journey have definitely had its ups and downs.  Saturday started with a great official practice; great energy, great presentation, and great execution.  We were feeling confident and felt ready to show the judges what we had in store for them.  After our official practice, we had lunch and rest time.  Following our well-deserved rest time, we began our “primping”.  Still feeling pumped, we jammed to some fun-filled music to get us in the spirit of our sassy, flirty short program.  When our primping finished, we had some off ice to solidify our confidence in our ability to execute a solid program.  Feeling confident in our team and ourselves was certainly the emotion rushing through our bodies as we loaded the bus ready to skate.  As we arrived to the rink, we headed to our warm-up area and began entering into full competition mode.  Before we knew it, warm-up was over and we were in our gorgeous dresses visualizing our perfect program.  Time definitely seemed to fly by because once we opened our eyes, it was as if we were in our beginning position.  Unfortunately, our program was not as strong as we had hoped it would be, but we were still proud of how we pushed through the program and finished strong.  We received our scores and immediately put it behind us.  We were ready to transform into vampires; we were ready to attack. 

           

Sunday came faster than expected.  As our six o’ clock alarms went off, we knew we had a long day ahead of us, but we were ready for the challenge.  The routine was similar to Saturday’s.  After breakfast, we loaded the bus and headed to our official practice.  Like Saturday, we had a strong official. We were extremely proud of ourselves and were ready to show our fierce and ferocious program.  During the pre-competition hours, we came together as one and fed off each other’s positive energy.  It truly showed how much we trusted each other and how we were going to work together to skate well.  As the bus pulled up to the rink, we took on the persona of vampires and warmed up.  Just like Saturday, before we entered the ice, we called our other coach, Shannon, who was unable to be with us this week.  She assured us that she was confident in our skating and ability to perform our best skate yet.  Sooner than we knew, it was time to take the ice.  We went out there and gave it our all. Unfortunately, we had some mishaps, however, we did not let those accidents bring us down in the least.  We pulled through and ended strong.  After the competition, we returned to the locker room and had a team pep talk.  We knew we had a lot of work to do, but we weren’t going to give up.   Colette came in and said she was incredibly proud of us and impressed by our strength of not giving up when times got tough.  We supported Team USA at the awards ceremony and expressed our congratulations. 

We returned to the hotel, changed our clothes, and then went to a pizza parlor.  There, we got the chance to see our parents, let loose, and have fun on our last night in Sweden.  It was nice to finally be able to relax and just enjoy everyone’s company. Even though we may not have ended up where we wanted to be, we have learned a lot from our time here in Sweden. We have big plans to help us prepare and come back stronger than ever at nationals.   A final congrats to the Synchroettes junior team and Miami University’s senior team on their bronze medal finishes!

GO USA!!!!!

Sharon & Katilyn :)