Colorado Crossroads

Last month my team and I had traveled to Denver, Colorado for one of the biggest tournaments of the season. Also known as the Colorado Crossroads tournament. With over 200 teams from around the U.S, my team was going in as the highest rank from utah as 4th place putting us in a great spot to start off our first days of playing. This tournament has always been one of my most favorites out of the many that I travel to every year, but being that this is my last year of club and the last time I was ever going to play in this tournament, it just made it more of an amazing experience.

As soon as we got off the plane, we got our rental and arrived to our hotel to find it packed with crowds of people both inside and out. I mean we didn't know what was going on... but we were curious enough to roll down our windows and try and take a closer look as we pulled into the parking lot. We're just nosey like that I guess... LOL. We saw tons of people dressed up in different kinds of costumes! As we sat in the lobby waiting for our coach to check us into our rooms, looking at all the varieties of costumes and signs that were around we realized that we were at an anime convention. Lol.

NOTE: For those of you who don't know what anime is. They're characters of japanese cartoons such as pokemon, digimon, sailor moon, etc.

I could tell ya now it was pretty crazy. I saw at least 5 pikachu's, 4 sailor moons, 2 charmanders, and even sub zero and scorpio from Mortal Kombat. Hahaha. It was quite the show... and this picture proves it. Lol. These girls in the photo were fairies, and the girl on the far right of the couch was a unicorn... hmmmm, I wonder which cartoon she's from? ha. Some of those outifts were outrageous! But cool :p

I mean as ridiculous as these people looked from our perspective, to them there was nothing wrong. I mean they looked at us like "WE" were the weird ones.. haha. As extreme as our night sounded, it had gotten even more crazy when some guy in a gas mask punched one of our team moms in the face! (For no reason, he was just drunk apparently. lol)-- but drunk or not, its still not ok. Lol. So we had to call the cops and he was arrested, pretty sure my coach was gonna beat the crap outta that guy. haha.

Our first day of matches we started off
extremely well in defeating all of our components and taking first. But even though the first day seemed easy in a sense, we knew we had upcoming tough teams that we would have to face. This kept our motivation to work harder on limiting our mistakes and having higher expectations. After four LONG but exhausting games, we went to dinner and headed back to our hotel to sleep for the next big day ahead of us.

Having the morning wave for the 3 days that we were down there, it was pretty tiring waking up at 5:30 every morning and preparing for our games. But starting early meant finishing early which had us ending at noon and giving us the rest of the day to enjoy our trip :) Although the weather wasn't as great, the city was beautiful. Not that Salt Lake isn't beautiful, Denver just had its own kinda beauty.

So we're sitting in our hotel rooms dying of boredom and one of my teammates (the one jumping behind me on the right) comes into the room and says, "Let's take some epic pictures!" lol- of course I was down. What were a couple of bored teenage girls to do?? hah. This was BY FAR thee most funniest night of my life. We even went a floor lower than the floor we were staying on, just so my coach couldn't hear us jumping in the halls. Lol. We attempted to take this "action picture" about 12 times before we actually got it right. Being a ninja ain't easy folks ;) lol.

Before I was born, my grandmother had died from breast cancer which left me unfortunate to never meeting her in person. But from the stories my dad would tell me, I knew she was an amazing woman. Every year the tournament has a "Dig Pink" day where they choose one day (usually Sunday) to support those who have suffered from breast cancer and the women who are fighting it against it. In honor of those people, each team is required to wear something pink. So my team and I had went and bought bright pink sequenced headbands and wore them in respect to the fight against breast cancer. Some teams had pink jerseys, pink socks, pink laces and even pink hair! It was amazing to see such great support.

Even though we didn't walk out of the gym with gold medals around our necks, the experience was more to us than not being able to win every game. But it gave us the motivation to work just as hard and being able to surpass our abilities the next time around in our next upcoming tournament in reno.

I can honestly say it was one extraordinary trip I'm never gonna forget. Of course there were other details I could say but thats gonna take some chapters, not blogs. Lol- so maybe I'll save it for another blog when I have alotta time on my hands ;)

..Just Because/Senior Year

So i noticed that blogging has become the "new thing" nowadays and after reading blogs from other people it had interested me enough to try it out and make one for myself! :) So here I am...

So I woke up this morning thinking about how much I hate school and how I can't wait to be done with it, and then it dawned on me and I realized that I only have 2 more months left until I graduate from highschool.
--2 more months and I'm done.... completely. No more seeing favorite teachers. No more reuniting with class friends. No more spirit week. No more dances. No more classes to ditch. LOL. Jk. I know it may not seem like such a big deal, but just the thought of me being done with highschool scares the sh** outta me. Lol- I mean, leaving highschool and friends are hard of course but growing up is even harder. My sister had told me that after you graduate, your entire life changes and you learn to become an adult. Now for me, that could go both ways in being a good thing or a bad thing. Sometimes I even ask myself if I'm ready to enter into the reality world and leave home where I can learn to be more independent and live on my own. I mean I still feel like a kid inside! Lol. But I know I need to realize that I can't expect to be sheltered by parents my whole life. After all, one of these days I'm gonna be living on my own and possibly married with kids. I can't be some sore loser on the side. Lol.

I've been dreading the day that I graduate since my senior year had began last august, thinking to myself: Who's going to be there? Who am I gonna sit by? What am I gonna wear?...... Am I gonna look fat in my gown? LOL- I mean cmon now, its my highschool graduation.. I wanna look smokin! Oh I mean, sophisticated and adult like. Lol. But seriously though, thats the biggest upcoming event for me and just thinking about gives me butterflies in my stomach. My boyfriend had told me that graduating is "the greatest feeling in the whole world"..... so I thought to myself, " Mmmm no honey, LOSING WEIGHT is the greatest feeling in the whole world" Lol. Just kidding, thats besides the point. But what he said really did hit me hard. There are a lot of things great feelings can come from but are only in comparison to baby steps. For me, graduating is another big step higher into accomplishing my life long goals. So until that day, I'm just another teenage girl learning to grow up and preparing to take that step.