The Time of My Life

By 17 Comments

Hey y’all!
Today, I’m finally doing the jump rope post I’ve been talking about for several months. For those of you that are new to Ashley’s Carnival Ride within the last few months, I’ll explain a little bit.
When I was in elementary school, I was on my school’s jump rope team. By the end of our run, we were nationally-ranked! I started with the team in second grade, and in third grade, I made the traveling team. We traveled all over Oklahoma doing demonstrations at schools and other events, and we attended workshops and camps in Texas and Louisiana.

The whole traveling team!
I’m the freakishly tall one in the middle. You can probably tell because of my giraffe legs!

Performing at a school

Me with my friend Britni
As you can see, my love for hair accessories started way back then :)


As fun as it was, it was really hard work. I was definitely in the best shape of my life back then. It looks easy, but it is definitely challenging and a wonderful workout.

We competed two years at Regional competetion in Shreveport, Louisiana. Our first year we placed second in our group routine. Our second year, I was on the competition team, and we won!

I performed a solo at regionals and placed 11th.

Me with my coach

Our winning routine was performed to the theme from Mission Impossible. It was especially exciting because we beat our rivals, the team who beat us the year before. After our routine, everyone in the audience was talking about how great our routine was and that we deserved to win. As the judges were announcing the winners, we were all holding hands and holding our breath. When they announced the second place team, we all started screaming! It was such an exciting moment for us, especially after we worked so hard!

Because we won, we got to move on to Nationals at Disney World! We spent hours and hours during our summer practicing our group routine. As awesome as we thought it was at Regionals, we knew we had to step it up for Nationals.
We performed our group routine to the theme from Mission Impossible!

I got to do my solo as a part of the group routine

We ended up placing 7th, which was really awesome for our first trip to Nationals!

Of course we got to do a little bit of playing too!

Every year after Nationals, ESPN shows highlights from the competition. Our team was shown on TV, and they included the part of the routine with my solo! It is pretty cool to say I was on ESPN!

After that year, our coach left, so that was the end of our team. It was really hard to see such a wonderful thing come to an end. It was hard to see everyone go their separate ways. We managed to stay friends, some of us closer than others, but it was weird not spending several hours a week together. I’ve always wondered what could have been accomplished if we’d had even one more year.
That was such a wonderful and exciting time in my life. I actually got a little teary going through the pictures and watching some videos online. We were such great friends and had so much fun. We spent a lot of time together and made some wonderful memories that will stay with me forever.
I want to leave you with a video of this year’s group show National winner, the Heartbeats. They are a team that we competed with our year at Nationals. Because of my spinal fusions, I’m not supposed to jump anymore, or I’d do a demonstration for you myself! :)
Enjoy!

Comments

  1. says

    OMG– this is so awesome. I always wanted to be in a jump rope competition when I was young! That’s so cool that you went all the way to nationals!!

    Reply

  3. says

    That’s amazing!! haha I was in the jump rope club in elementary school but we were no where near as hardcore! That’s awesome. :)

    Reply

  9. says

    Ash! This is crazy cool!! I never know that jump rope was such a big deal!! Shows you how much I know, haa!!

    You were so tall and skinny!! Reminds me of my cheerleading days when I was tall and slender as well :)

    Reply

  16. says

    I had no idea that jump rope teams even existed (wow, I feel ignorant)! And how AMAZING you got to go to Disney World – as a kid, that was probably the coolest thing you EVER got to do! I love this post.

    Reply

  17. says

    Aww I love this!! That is awesome that you used to do this kind of stuff. I only jump roped in my back yard, never even knew about these competitions! But now I wanna go watch more of them!! :) Very cool!

    Reply

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