Viva Las Vegas

Another whirlwind weekend is in the books.  This time the Twisters family went out to Las Vegas to take on the other teams competing in the Vegas Cup.  Allan, Ericka, and I left Friday afternoon and after a small delay we got to our hotel (Mandalay Bay) right around dinner time.  Ericka said she wanted to dress up so we took some time to do so and then donning our nice clothes we found a great Asian restaurant for dinner.  As we were finishing up, Corey (the athletic trainer for SMG) met us and brought tickets to Le Réve with him.  Three of us enjoyed the show while Allan fell asleep.  Afterwards Brett (assistant Stanford men's coach) joined the group and somehow we ended up in a limo on the way to the MGM.  Allan wanted to spend some time with his buddies that were in town from Cal so we all kind of did our own socializing pretty late into the night before getting back.

Yesterday we got up and went to the local outlet stores so Ericka could pick something up for Remi.  We spent longer there than we anticipated and kind of rushed to the meet site, but made it.  I taped up one of the girls and then it was go time!  We had five level 7's and three level 8's and the meet director split us so we were in two separate rotations; the 8's started on vault and the 7's on beam.  There were some definite highlights to the competition including one of the 8's standing up a huge pike tsuk for the first time, having a level 7 vault champion, and seeing the how clean and prepared our girls look in comparison to some of the other teams.  In the end the level 7's won by three points while the 8's took second, which is pretty good considering there were only three of them and it takes that many scores to make up the final team total. Each of the 8's won floor in their age group too so we were definitely dominate there.

After the competition we made it back to the hotel, quickly changed, had an amazing steak dinner, and went off again to Winter Cup.  Brett got us our tickets ahead of time which was great because by the time we made it there it was pretty full.  It was weird to be back in that arena after going with Cale last year.  It was very different for me because while I wanted the Stanford guys to do well it just seemed like there was a lot less on the line.  Overall it was kind of a rough competition for everyone, though of course there were a few standouts.  Senior Eddie Penev made the national team for the first time as did one of the incoming freshman for next year.

We didn't last long after Winter Cup and ended up having a late night snack at the sushi bar at our hotel before going to bed (because of course we hadn't eaten enough on the trip up to that point).  It was up bright and early this morning for our flight which didn't even leave on time.  That left us approximately five minutes to make our connection in Ontario so it's a good thing all three of us are quick.  It was a rather bumpy ride back and I'm glad to be home.  We hit the ground running again tomorrow in preparation for what will most likely be our toughest competition yet at the Spirit of the Flame Challenge, held in San Jose so it will be nice to be local.  My travel schedule will be getting even crazier heading into March so taking advantage of the down time is a definite must.