UNC is a Jump Rope School
This past weekend I got to compete in my final University Jump Rope Summit with Carolina Jump Rope, and Saturday became one of the best days of my college career. We traveled as a team to Oxford, Ohio to jump at Miami University against colleges from around the country. We went hoping to win the Collegiate Cup for the third year in a row, this award is basically the equivalent to winning the natty for any other collegiate sport.
After a long day of driving on Friday, we got up early Saturday morning to compete. I’m so proud of how the team did, we had many personal bests throughout the day and everyone was crushing it from our newest members to our members who had been competing for years before coming to college. Everyone was in such a good mood, and we all had such a fun time competing and cheering each other on after working so hard at practices all semester.
When we got to awards we were expecting to do well, but I think we did even better than everyone was expecting to. I’m so proud to say that everyone on the team placed at least once (they gave out awards for first through third place), and I loved seeing the looks on my teammates faces when they placed for an event that they didn’t expect to place for. Then came the big one: the collegiate cup.
I’m not going to lie, I was super nervous about this because I didn’t want the year that I was president to be the year that we lost it. I didn’t want to put too much pressure on it, I was happy with how everything went and we had done everything we could. I am glad to report that I had nothing to worry about, and we are still the reigning collegiate cup champions.
After awards were over we rushed back to our hotel to get changed into our gear for the UNC v Duke Final Four matchup, and we were hoping that somehow our success today would bring luck to the basketball team as well. We went to a bar, ironically called Skippers, to watch the game, and it definitely was a strange experience to watch the game in a different state where there were people who were not invested in the game. Over the next few hours we witnessed NCAA history get made as we pulled a win over Duke, and I think it is safe to say that we had some quality team bonding as we were stressing and screaming throughout the game.
We found a Franklin Street that was only an 11 minute drive away, so we packed into a couple cars and drove to “rush Franklin.” Although it would’ve been super cool to be able to rush Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, getting this experience after such a successful day of competing with my team is more special in some ways, and I know it is a day that I will never forget. Saturday was, as always, a Great Day to Be a Tar Heel for both Carolina Jump Rope and the basketball team.
