Yesterday, I informed Tia that she would be turning her tsuks over that day. She wanted to put it off until the next day, saying she promised she would do it Friday. I told her we need to do it today because I know from past experience how that story unfolds: Tomorrow will never come. I encouraged her that she could go home that night, feeling good about herself for making progress. I wanted her to imagine what that would feel like. All she had to do was try.
In the end, she did try for it. I gave her a couple of extra turns, past our rotation schedule, but she balked during the run. Given a little bit more time, she might have been able to gather herself together mentally to go for it. But I had to go help another group. Tia knew she blew her last shot at it for the day and started to break down. Sometimes, as a coach, I don't give her any sympathy and think she needs to be hard on herself; and coaches need to be hard on her. She needs to put a certain kind of pressure on herself to overcome her internal weaknesses; to make her desire to accomplish outweigh her fear of trying and possibly failing; to make the pain of not trying more hurtful than the (unlikely) pain that comes from an overwrought imagination of what could go wrong.
But in that moment, I gave her some words of encouragement that there will be a next time. Why? Because during those last two turns, I did see a glimpse of willingness to come to the edge and put it all on the line. She simply ran out of time.
Sometimes the girls need to understand that they are in a race against the clock and not waste time. Not goof around. Get their assignments done in the allotted time-frame. To live by the pressure of the clock. Other times?....they could use a bit more time.
Friday comes. I ask Tia about the promise made to turn her tsuks over today. She tells me she didn't put it in writing (I had joked with her regarding Remi's contract). I started simmering inside. I asked her didn't she think about this last night and about what she was going to overcome today. She said last night she had started to, but then got scared and put it out of her head. Now I could feel the steam whistling out my ears. I walked away.
Kort, in deciding the turnout numbers and how to split the groups, asks me if Tia did her tsuk yesterday. I told him what had happened. Now he's seriously irked and sends her to start on vault timers and to get ready to flip.
By the end of the first rotation, she had balked with Kort. She asked me to spot her. She said she would go for it. And you know what? I actually believed her. She looked sufficiently agitated enough that I got the sense she was in a state of realization that the only way to escape this kind of anguish, to exorcise this, was to get over it and just go, no matter how scared she felt.
I cleared it with Gio that I wasn't needed at the moment with the next group. Thea's been hamstrung by a new injury, so I had her film as Tia did 3 tsuks with a spot. I then gave her a choice: "Show one to Kort, live and in person; or if not, we had video proof." She had nervous hesitancy in her voice, but I was proud of her for wanting to make the right choice: Show Kort, live.
So she does a 4th one for Kort. Kort tells her, "Good Tia. You have 5 more." Tia's face turned ashen for a brief moment, after the initial relief into thinking she was done and had survived. But it was only briefly. Her next 5 went by without any hitch. I think she was even enjoying herself in doing them.
By the end of vault, her heart and spirits were beaming. And I think it carried over into the rest of the evening because at the end of workout, she gave me a hug.
And then I was beaming.
