Mornings come really early on competition days. Pop’s food court opened at 6am and I was the first one there buying Mickey Waffles for the girls who were nearly ready to leave for the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. Katie’s team was meeting at 6:45am and Jacqueline’s at 7:30am.
Katie wound up being driven by a team member’s family as the line for the ESPN bus was very long, as there was more than just our teams staying at Pop. We drive shortly behind them with another family and we arrived in plenty of time, thank goodness.
We were even greeted by a rainbow!
ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex is HUGE. I am not sure what I was expecting, but this was far bigger than I had imagined. TwirlMania would be held in the HP Field House, which was easily found near the entrance. We took our seats and settled in for a very long 16 hour day. 3,000 individuals were competing across two gyms all day long. Competitions started at 8am and were scheduled to last until 6:30pm. Then the HP Field House needed to be totally emptied before the awards presentations could begin later that night.
The girls performed at 9:18am, 1:40pm, and 2:38pm…
After Jacqueline’s team was finished, we headed over to the ESPN Wide World of Sports Grill to have some lunch- this worked out well, you order and pay as you enter and then your food is magically delivered to your table. Free drink refills are also available, which was a huge perk at this point in the day. Once we were done eating, Mike and Mikey headed to Hollywood Studios and we headed back in the the HP Field House to cheer on more of our Sparkler teams.
Mike and Mikey did explore the grounds a bit during the day…
Mikey even found massage chairs, $2 for 5 minutes isn’t a bad deal- just kinda wished they told me before they left…
We headed back to the Grill around 6pm for some appetizers as we waited for the Field House to re-open. The lines started to form around 7p, so we decided to headed online- we weren’t back inside the building until closer to 8:30pm and the awards didn’t start until around 9pm. When it was all said and done, Katie’s team just missed the podium, Jacqueline’s team took first place (this routine has been undefeated!), and their joint performance also won AND their coach won for best choreography for that routine. As we were leaving, the girls posed with their new hardware…
After returning home to Pop, I got the girls settled and I explored a bit- as this was our last night…
