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The trampoline competition experience (as a parent)
Why Are You Tired? You’ve Been Sitting Down All Day!
Life as a Trampoline Competition Parent
If you’re the parent of a competitive trampoline gymnast, you’ll know there is no such thing as simply “going to a trampoline competition.”
It starts the night before.
Have we got the leotard? Competition kit? Tracksuit? Drinks? Enough food to sustain a small army? Hair stuff? Spare everything?
Is the alarm actually set?
Then comes the sort of alarm time that shouldn’t exist at a weekend.
You get up while it’s still dark, persuade a half-asleep gymnast to eat something, load everything into the car and set off on a three-hour drive to a sports centre you’ve never heard of.
And somehow, despite having done virtually all the organising, you will still ask approximately six times:
“Have you definitely got your leotard?”
What is a trampoline competition like for parents?
Eventually, you arrive. Perhaps a little bit stressed if its somewhere like central Birmingham.
Your gymnast disappears off with their club and you find yourself a seat in the stands.
Excellent. Your work here is done.
Except it isn’t.
Then the music starts.
And then they march out
The gymnasts line up and march out onto the competition floor to the music.
And this bit gets you every time.
You’ve watched them train. You’ve done the lifts, the early mornings, the late evenings and the endless competition journeys.
Now there they are, marching out with their team, looking far more grown-up than they did when you dragged them out of bed a few hours earlier.
For a moment, the nerves disappear and are replaced by an enormous rush of love and pride.
Look at her.
She’s actually doing this.
Then you remember what’s about to happen.
The nerves are back.
The easy bit: sitting down all day
Now comes warm-up.
You watch every bounce from approximately half a mile away.
That one looked a bit low.
Was that meant to travel that much?
Why have they stopped?
Why is the coach talking to her?
Is something wrong?
She looks worried.
Or does she?
Maybe that’s just her face.
You remind yourself that this is warm-up. It doesn’t matter. This is exactly what warm-up is for.
Your stomach ignores this entirely.
The set routine
First comes the set.
Your gymnast waits beside the trampoline.
You wait in the stands.
Eventually the judges are ready.
An arm goes up.
Time to go.
Ten skills. Around fifteen seconds.
You barely breathe.
One. Two. Three…
And then it’s over.
If the set goes well, you can relax.
Obviously you don’t.
Now you worry about the vol.
If the set doesn’t go well, you worry about the vol slightly more.
Either way, the result is essentially the same:
More worrying.
And now… we wait again
Because there are two rounds.
The set is done, but the voluntary routine — the vol — is still to come.
So your gymnast goes back to their coach and you return to your other important competition-day discipline:
Sitting in the stands and catastrophising from a considerable distance.
You check the scores.
You check them again.
You try not to think too much about what the vol could do to the rankings.
You think about it anyway.
Eventually its their turn again.
Back beside the trampoline.
Back to waiting for the judges.
Back to the nervous stomach.
Another arm goes up.
Here we go again.
Ten more skills.
Another fifteen seconds that somehow take three years.
Then it’s over.
Exhale.
Look at the scoreboard.
Difficulty.
Time of Flight.
Execution.
And finally, the score.
What happens when a trampoline competition goes wrong?
Sometimes it’s brilliant.
And sometimes it really isn’t.
A mistake. An interrupted routine. A score they weren’t hoping for. Or simply a routine they know wasn’t their best.
You feel every bit of the disappointment with them.
Unfortunately, this does not mean you are qualified to discuss it.
You try reassurance.
Wrong.
You point out everything that went well.
Also wrong.
You say it was only one competition.
Definitely wrong.
You attempt a hug.
Read the room.
Sometimes you even become the completely innocent recipient of a bit of misdirected anger while they process what just happened.
Eventually, after enough competitions, you learn the most useful parenting technique of all:
Shut up and drive.
So you begin the long journey home in silence while your gymnast replays those fifteen seconds in their head.
At some point — perhaps twenty minutes later, perhaps somewhere around the second motorway — they start talking.
And then you listen.
Because no matter how badly you want to make it better, sometimes they don’t need you to fix the disappointment.
They just need enough time to feel it.
And meanwhile you’re quietly processing your own disappointment for them, because apparently that wasn’t enough emotional activity for one day either.
And then there are the good trampoline competition days
Because sometimes everything comes together.
The warm-up looks good.
The set goes well.
And then the vol starts and you realise they’re absolutely flying.
Ten skills later, they finish and you already know.
They know too.
The smile appears before the score does.
Maybe it’s a PB.
Maybe it’s a final.
Maybe it’s a medal.
Maybe they’ve simply performed the routine they’ve worked so hard for.
And suddenly the 5am alarm, motorway miles, service-station coffee, hours of waiting and nervous stomach all seem completely reasonable.
You watch them come back to the stands carrying a medal, grinning from ear to ear, desperate to tell you every detail of something you have literally just watched.
And you’re already wondering when the next competition is.
Because being a trampoline parent is tiring, nerve-racking, expensive and occasionally completely ridiculous.
But when you get to watch your gymnast experience one of those moments when all the training pays off?
Yeah.
It’s worth sitting down all day for.
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