Nationals were 2 weeks ago in Des Moines, Iowa. I'm a little late on posting, but here it is!
We flew out Tuesday morning, and as we were leaving we found this cute lil scene on our door left by our friends Kent and Kayla. It's TJ pole vaulting and me cheering him on :) It definitely put smiles on our faces. You guys are so awesome!
TJ competed on Wednesday evening. This is him on his way to compete!
TJ ended up not having the greatest day pole vaulting. Kind of a bummer. He rolled his ankle in practice the Monday before, which wasn't the funnest thing, but it wasn't horrible so he could still vault pretty well. Some days it just doesn't come together, and it's tough it had to happen at Nationals, but it did. Someone's gotta take last place, right?! I am still super duper proud of him. He is the 24th ranked pole vaulter in the NATION. That's pretty amazing. Just getting to Nationals is a huge accomplishment. I don't have any pictures of him vaulting, sorry. I also didn't get any pictures with TJ's parents and Kaeli while they were there! They came all the way out there to watch TJ. It was so fun to have you guys there!!
After the meet we went out to eat at Jethro's. It's a bbq place, and it's really yummy and they give you HUGE portions of food. It was late...like past 10 pm when we left the meet, so we were grateful it was open :) Our group was me, TJ and his family, Erik (pole vault coach), Chris and Emily and both of their families.
The weather was crazy while we were out there! The first couple days it was super hot and humid. Like 94 degrees and humid. Yuck. Then the next few days it was stormy - huge thunder and lightning storms and lots of rain. It was really fun to watch the thunder and lightning, and we were grateful TJ had jumped before all of it! We stayed up watching the storms really late...until almost 3 am one night. The lightning was just constant flashes; it was so cool. The next 2 pictures are TJ in his chair watching the lightning. You can see how much lighter the sky is with a flash of lightning.
It was kind of nice that TJ jumped on Wednesday because then we just had the rest of the trip to hang out and do basically whatever we wanted. It was so nice to just be away, not worrying about anything, and just enjoying the experience of Nationals. Most of what we did was go to the track and watch the meet, then go out to eat, then back to the track, then more food. Repeat. We also did a lot of chillin' in our hotel room :)
The nice thing was that it was still pretty warm when it was stormy, so it wasn't horrible being at the track meet. Bad thing about lightning storms is they don't mesh well with track meets. There were several lightning and rain delays...so they were there pretty late some days.
But it was just fun to be there watching :)
The last day we spent at the track it decided to get really nice again....like 93 degrees and super sunny! We weren't really expecting it, so we didn't have sunscreen or anything on, so we got pretty burnt. But it was nice to feel the sunshine. And it was so fun to watch the meet!! Did I say that already?! It was really great competition. so. much. fun.
Us at the track :)
Every day they had a different wristband to get back in the stadium. Had to sport 'em for a picture :)
While we're on the subject of pole vaulting...the middle of May was the Mountain West Conference Championship meet in Fort Collins, Colorado. Emily and I decided to road trip it out there to watch our hubbys pole vault. It was SO cold the day they jumped. Seriously freezing. Chris, Victor, and TJ all had blankets to try and keep warm. They looked so funny. They had to get rid of them, though, because they weren't BYU issue....whatever.
TJ took 5th place in the conference. Here's the teej flying through the air :)
And a pic, just for fun.
Coach was looking for someone to drive the poles out to Colorado, so Emily and I volunteered to drive a BYU van out there (which we found out after was totally against every rule...haha). We got a huge 12 passenger van, and we took 4 bags of poles, javelins, shot puts, hammers, and training tables - so we helped them save a lot of money. This is Erik strapping the poles good and tight on our sweet ride.
We also took a puppy with us on the way out there! Some guys on the track team had bought their mom a puppy for mother's day, and she was going to be at the Conference meet, so they asked if we would drive the puppy out there so she could pick her up. I just realized I never got a picture of the actual puppy....she was really cute. Her name was Roxy and she was an 8 week old chocolate lab. And such a chill puppy! I was kind of nervous, but she was so good the whole ride. We even strapped her in :)
Me and TJ at the track
MWC champs for the 11th (?) year in a row! The conference is pretty excited that BYU isn't going to be part of it any more, haha! (BYU is going independent, for those who don't know...so they will be joining a different conference and going to different meets starting this fall)
And that's it for pole vault. I think TJ is going to miss it. A lot. And I'm going to miss watching him and cheering him on. We are hoping he will be able to find a high school to help coach at or something to help him stay involved with it. We'll see! He's had a great pole vault career, and I am so proud of him.
