Vault Mental blocks

[SamIam]

We have had and I think made it through our first mental block. I was told by our coachs to not worry about it. "Everybody goes through it", "she's going to be fine". Honestly it was tough to watch.

Sam has progressed very well through the years. Never really having trouble with much at all. This year was first year L5 and for the first half of the season vault was usually low 9's. Never has been her strongest event, but was always "in the mix" for it.
She hit the table a month ago. Not terribly hard, but enough to know if she hit it hard it was going to hurt. That's when it started. She started icing her foot on vault day because "it hurt". I'm certainly ok with that as she had just a bit of swelling on top of it. We nursed our way through that and with her coachs approval she scratched on vault at the last meet. Seeing herself in last was a bit of a shock when we looked at the scores later.

Fast forward to last thursday. I went over to practice because she had asked me to. It was vault day and I got there in time to watch her run up and stop 3 times. After all our talk it was very discouraging to watch. I really thought she would nail it. I called her out to the lobby after her coach had spoken with her. I simply told her we would not drive 6 hours to States this weekend for her to compete in 3 events. Either go back out and do the vault or tell her coach she was going to take a break from gym. She asked "what does take a break mean?" I replied that means we won't be coming over here 4 times a week.

She got a drink of water went back out and spoke with her coach and proceeded to absolutely kill the vault. Better than I had ever seen in competition this year. She did about a half dozen before she ever gave me "the look" from the floor. So proud to see my little girl overcome her fears and do what I knew she could do. She has a new found desire to excell in the vault.

I had not planned on making the trip to States this year, but when she said last night "I need you there" guess who's got a road trip planned.

Didn't want to go on long with this just thought I would share.
And I hate to say it to much, but what a great coach we have.