Cade

“Keep those legs straight Jennifer! I’m not going to tell you again,” I screamed across the room from where I had perched myself on one of the several empty chairs I had scattered around the gym. 

“They are straight,” Jennifer defended weakly as she sat down to take a breather.

“If you call that straight then I’m a fucking frog,” I said harshly but the girl only laughed. How she could find it in herself to laugh when her next competition was only a week away and her legs looked like they did, I don’t know but it managed to make some of my aggravation leak away. 

Jennifer was only 16 but she had been with me every day for the past two years for at least an hour. She had gotten used to my yelling and cursing and it seemed to not bother her anymore once she realized I wasn’t going to drop her as a student for something as simple as bent knees and unpointed toes.

“Run it one last time and then you’re done for the day,” I told her as she stood up and readied herself for another go.

“I can do another hour,” she said as she looked up at the clock in the corner of the room. 

“You’re getting tired,” I told her. “And you’re getting sloppy. If staying won’t help you then I’m not going to allow it. Run it once more and then get off my mat.” She looked like she was about to argue so I beat her to it. “What’s rule 1 in my gym,” I asked her with a glare and her shoulders sagged; I didn’t miss the way she looked at my right ankle, currently wrapped up tightly in a compression band. 

“Safety first,” she sighed. 

“And do you feel like you could safely continue for another hour?”

“No,” she sighed again.

“So are we running this once more or are you leaving now?” The only answer I got was her arms raising as she prepared to take her one last run.

The first backhand spring had been flawless, the second shaky, and the full she attempted after had her sprawled out on the floor looking up at the ceiling.

“You good,” I called after her when she didn’t jump up like she usually did.

“I’m good,” she called, pushing herself up to a sitting position. “What went wrong on that one?”

“You didn’t jump high enough because you’re tired and you opened up too early because you wanted to get it over with faster. Do you see now why we’re done for the day?” She nodded before beginning her cool-down stretches. “I have things to do in the office,” I said as I pushed myself off the chair, my ankle and knees protesting the sudden move. “If I hear so much as a rebound coming from in here, you’re not competing next week got it?” She nodded again and I left her.

The walk short walk to the office was painful. Despite me being fully healed my ankle still became sore and stiff with every move, my leg still had deep dents in the shin, and my knees acted like there was a sharp knife wedged in the joints. Something as simple as walking now was full of pain and it made me consider how much I truly needed to walk every time I got up.

The hallway down the office had been a pain in the ass to set up 2 years ago but now that it was finished, this one hallway was probably my favorite place in the entire gym. Shelves littered every spare inch of the wall and were covered with framed pictures and trophies I was meant to ‘hold on to’ until my students either wanted the back or forgot they were here entirely. The pictures were always my favorite, either taken during practice when neither I nor the student didn’t realize the picture was taken or were full of smiles and trophies after a particularly hard event.

They were the only thing I had left from students after they moved on and I cherished the memories.

Going to competitions after everything that happened had been hard at first and for the first few months after opening the gym I had simply refused to go but when I finally broke down and went to one to support a rather shy kid, I remembered the electric feeling of competition and couldn’t stay away. Even if I could never compete again, it was the closest thing I could get to it and while it wasn’t the same, it was good enough.

Gymnastics has always been a drug to me. Competing and practicing was a high I couldn’t shake no matter how hard I tried. After my injury, I was told that I could try to compete again but after only one basic pass had me doubled over in pain, I realized my days of doing were over. I was mad. I stormed out of that gym without a second thought, no clue what I was meant to do now that the only thing I truly loved was ripped away from me. The first year I wasted by sitting on my ass and feeling sorry while I blew through a good dent in my savings just so I wouldn’t leave the house. I made it only a few months into the second year before I bought this place and decided to give teaching a try. I had never done it but any excuse to be back on a mat in form was enough to satisfy the itch in my brain that wanted it more than anything.

The one downside to owning a gym was the paperwork.

I sighed as I sat down in my desk chair and looked at new applications submitted for students. Hundreds piled in every week but most of them weren’t worth my time, several being too young, most just seeing this as a glorified daycare, and only a handful were serious about getting coaching from someone who had competed for most of their life and had several medals to prove it. 

It had been hard to turn kids away the first year. Some knew who I was and looked at me like I hung the moon but didn’t have the dedication or skill to compete and since this wasn’t a play gym and they were taking time away from kids that actually wanted to be here, I had to let them go. 

There were plenty of gyms in the area, most of them tailored for kids in cheer or dance who needed to get better at their skills for a reason other than competition while also doubling as errand time for the parents but this was not the place for that. All of my kids compete and all of them are damn good at it.

I had just cleared the last application of the day when a knock came at my office door. I sighed, already knowing what was about to happen before motioning for the mom staring at me through the window to come in. 

“Hello, Coach Cade,” Jennifer’s mom said in a sing-song voice before sitting down on the chair in front of me. “Do you have a minute to talk about Jennifer’s routine? It’ll only take a second.”

“I would love to talk about the routine I spent a month perfecting,” I answered, plastering a smile on my face. This had been one of the only downsides of coaching.

“So I came in a little bit earlier today and saw some of Katie’s routine and I noticed that her’s seems a lot more difficult than Jennifer’s.”

“Well, Katie does know more advanced skills than Jennifer so that would make sense.”

“Right,” she said with a fake laugh. “That does make sense but I was thinking, since they both compete in the same age group, it’s clear which of them is going to win next week. Why not throw in some more advanced skills in Jennifer’s set that way she has a fair chance and doesn’t have to be stuck in second again?”

I could only stare at her.

“You’re asking me to change her routine a week before the competition?”

“Not change,” she dismissed with a wave of her hand. “Just advance it. You know, maybe a tuck instead of that second backhand spring. And then I was thinking maybe a front aerial instead of that front handspring you have her doing. Just something to help boost her difficulty level. I hate seeing Katie always get first place when Jennifer tries just as hard.”

“Your daughter can’t reliably do those skills,” I told her, trying to keep my voice calm. “I’m not going to send her into a competition with half-baked skills when the skills she can do are perfect and will easily get her second place.”

“I’ve seen her do those skills plenty of time, she practices at home constantly, I know she can do them.”

“Did you know that her success rate on front aerials is only 78%,” I asked and the smile on her face dropped. “And that the rate for the full she’s doing is only 97%? She has two backhand springs to give her the speed and momentum to get her all the way over without having to bail out of it. Tucks do not have that same benefit. If we change it to a tuck she will likely not have the speed needed and will only turn about 3 quarters of her full rotation and that will affect her score. Or, if we want to really think about worse-case scenarios here, she could manage to not jump high enough, under-rotate, not have time to land, and suddenly we have medics running onto the mat trying to figure out what hurts since we all heard the snap of a bone when she fell. Is that what you’re wanting?”

“No! No of course not,” she sputters and I see the pity she is shooting at my right leg and it just makes me madder.

“You’re daughter is doing the most advanced skills that she can do safely. I don’t mind doing the harder skills in practice when I am there to catch her but as you very well know, I can’t spot her at a competition. Katie has a more advanced routine because she’s here for two hours a day, every day. We work on her more advanced skills for the first hour and touch up the lesser ones in the second when she starts getting tired. You only pay for one hour with me so we have to split that up into only 30 minutes. I understand my prices are high. If you think it would benefit her more, I will gladly send in recommendations to other gyms in the area-,”

“I am very well off,” the woman says with a glare. “I can pay for more hours with you.”

“If that’s what you want to do, I can block out the next hour tomorrow as a trial. She was tired today before we would have even started the second hour and I will not have her continue if there is a risk of injury.”

“She’s just lazy. She can do it if you just make her.” I have to bite my tongue.

“So you don’t think an hour of constant movement is hard or tiring?”

“I think she should be used to it by now. It’s been two years for god sake.”

“Alright, so how about this then, tomorrow in the second hour you come out of the observation room and you tumble for the second hour. We’ll see if her tiredness is just her being ‘lazy’ or not.” Her mouth fell open as she glared at me.

“I will do no such thing,” she seethed and was about to open her mouth to say more when I cut her off.

“Oh good so I will see you and Jennifer tomorrow for her two hour trial and if it goes well that will be our new usual. I am not changing the current routine as it is too close to the competition but if all goes well, next month we can see about upping the difficulty. Sound good?” She looked like she was about to argue so I added, “Or you can find another coach. It’s completely up to you.”

She gives me only last glare before gathering her purse and standing up from the chair. The door gets slammed on the way out and I can’t find it in myself to care.

I sighed and flexed my foot from under the desk. One hour of peace before it was on to the next screaming parent. I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and turned back to the computer.

It was going to be a long night.