“Now welcome to the mat D-14 Falcons Cheer”. I woke up from a very scary dream about my competition. My friends and I got up and went downstairs to get breakfast but I couldn’t help being nervous and scared. I kept thinking this is nationals we have to bring everything to get first and be national champions. After breakfast we had to hop in the car and immediately started to get scared and I could tell that Gabby, Sophia and Sophie were scared too. The stadium was about 5 minutes from the hotel so I didn’t really have time to calm myself down. When I get nervous I talk a lot so the whole car ride we were all talking so much that we got told to quiet down. We arrived at the stadium and it was huge; there must have been 1,000 seats all facing down to the mats. We met the team and sat really high up and watched lots of the team do their performances but that just made me more nervous than I was before. Our coach yells “Falcons we are going to practice before going on the mat”. Oh no that’s when I went into full panic mode that means that we are going on in less than 30 minutes. We walked into several different rooms all for different things. The first room was stretching and tumbling, the second room was for stunts and the last room was for full outs( that is when you do your full routine with everything).Once we were all done with that we had to wait in line until they called us. It took about 15 minutes for us to make it up to the front of the line. In my head I’m thinking this is it, you’re about to go on and perform the routine. I was calm until my coach said 5 more minutes and that when I went crazy all the thoughts in my head saying what happens if I forget where to go, what if my stunt drops, what if my shoes come off or my hair comes out. Everyone was reassuring me that I would be fine and to just do my best and that didn’t really help I was still very nervous. “1 minute” I felt like I was going to throw up. We all started to get ready holding each other’s hand and saying that we love each other and we are going to do great. Once they announced “Now welcome to the mat D-14 Falcons Cheer” I knew we were gonna kill it. We were running onto the mat and you could hear the crowd roaring for us and I could see the judges and the cameras that were filming us for the people at home. Once our music started I was like okay we are actually doing this right now and then all my fears just went away and I knew what I had to do. We finished our routine and we yelled and screamed and hugged each other. We were so happy. We waited to see if we were going to make it to the second day and we did. The next day we went back and did our routine again but this time felt different I wasn’t afraid or scared. I was sad. I knew that this was the last time I would be competing with this routine and with these girls. We all went out there and gave it all out. We made no mistakes and our routine was perfect. We all ran to each other so happy that we did this. We could see all the parents jumping up and down screaming. They were so happy for us. We were off to awards and at this point it was all up to the judges we did everything we could. They got to our division and we all held hands in a circle and put our heads down. All I could think was please let us get first please please. “ And now third place is …” We were all so scared and when they didn’t say it was us we were so happy and now it was us and another team. We were all praying that it wouldn’t be us. “ Second place goes to…” This didn’t register in my head until everyone was yelling and screaming and crying saying we won, we won. This moment was so precious and I will never forget it. We are national champions.