Oct. 18, 2007
Get behind the scenes of Illinois Gymnastics with Illini Ink - the weekly women's gymnastics journal. In this week's edition, senior Krystal Melcarek talks about how fast the season is approaching, impressive freshmen and fall break this weekend.
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Finally, it seems we all are getting a much needed break from the unusual heat that has been hanging around Champaign for the past few weeks. Although it is nothing like the winter weather that surely awaits us, it has been nice to have some fall weather this week.
Although temperatures may be cooling down outside, inside Kenney Gym things were heating up this week during practice. It has been fun and exciting, and the atmosphere in the gym has been filled with energy and encouragement. Not only because this weekend is fall break for us ladies, but because everyone is picking up their intensity level and each event is looking more and more consistent day by day.
It is exciting to see the freshmen and some of the other older girls trying out their new floor routines for the first time; it pumps us up at practice and lets the girls show off a little and have some fun! I am very impressed with level of desire and dedication that I have seen the freshmen show these past few weeks. They work with a positive attitude and truly push themselves in everything they do. With last week's team "conditioning" exercise, it was amazing to see how well we all work together, help each other out, back each other up, and act like a team, even if we were just doing a fun little group exercise. I think this is already a good sign of the team unity we have. I am sure we will continue to build upon it for the upcoming season. All of us girls have realized that season is closing in...and FAST!
Thanks to our wonderful freshmen girls, we have our own homemade schedule of our meets for this spring and a countdown calendar that is in the gym, reminding us every day, that there are less than 45 days until our Mixed Pairs competition!! Once I saw that, I realized that my senior year was definitely here and I started to look forward to the best part of the year more than ever; season. The team has been working out really hard and is looking stronger at this point in the year than I have seen it in my past three years. All of our newly created conditioning routines seem to be paying off for each one of us!
With Thursday being our last practice of the week, we are pushing ourselves more than ever since we all know we have one exciting weekend ahead of us. This weekend will give us time to rest up a little and keep up with our academics; getting ahead with any work we might have for next week. Some of us will be going home to see our family and friends for our fall break, and some of us will be sticking around Champaign to see our football team play in one of the biggest games of the year against #24 Michigan. I know most of us are so excited to see our team show `em up since our football program has made a huge step this year in the Big Ten. Hopefully, we will see many more wins and a bowl game appearance. We know that the football players and coaches have been working hard to accomplish these goals! We all plan to come back to the gym on Monday pumped up and ready to go!
Stay tuned for some more great highlights and look forward to hearing from Lashlee next week.
GO ILLINI!!
Krystal
