Greetings Pioneer fans!  This is Tori Cochefski again, reporting about this past week’s activities. 
What an awesome week this has truly been! We started the week off with practice on Sunday! The practice started with lots of numbers and then tapered off for Monday and Tuesday’s practice! This was in preparation for the meet we had on Friday, February 24th against Oklahoma and University of Michigan.  Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday’s practices were focused on the little tenths that we can gain back in our team score.  We also worked on showing the heart we have for this sport and the fire, determination, and history making in our eyes so we can compete the same way. Monday was extremely special for us! We had the privilege of TWU professor, Dr. Webb, come in and talk to us. This week he talked to us about being grateful. He explained to us that the more one says thank you and is grateful for what they have in their lives the happier they are and become. He also showed us a short clip from a new movie called Red Tails, from which we devised a new pioneer chant.

“Nothing’s difficult; everything is a challenge, thru adversity to the finish, to the last competition, to the last event, to the last routine, to the last minute… We Fight, We Fight, WE FIGHT, WE FIGHT! “

Personally, I absolutely love this chant. To me, it describes our team and our purpose that we have this year. Through everything we have and will go through this year, we won’t give anything up but will fight till the last minute. If we have an uncharacteristic mistake in the beginning of our line ups, we will not let it affect us. The rest of the line-up has their back and we continue as solid as can be! This team is more than just a team, we are family. And this is what makes us so special. We have the ability to finish through adversity, fight till the last event, the last routine, the last minute and finish together!
Wednesday was our day off! It was a gorgeous day here in Texas. It was a day for us to get ahead on homework, do any treatments we need in the training room, or just hang outside enjoying the beautiful weather. Thursday was a light day with visualization, dance throughs, vault timers, and swinging/giants on bars. This was in preparation for our meet the next day at Oklahoma. We warmed up our normal way, went through our meet rotation: Beam, Floor, Vault, and Bars. Friday was our meet at OU. I am extremely proud on how well we did. We thought about the little things and competed with fire in our eyes and with a great amount of heart. We finished the meet with a season high team score and away meet score. It still was not as good as we wanted, which is awesome because we had a high team score and there still is room for improvement. This is what making history is all about!

Well that’s all for now. Check back next week for another update! Hope to see you all at our last home meet and senior night this Friday, March 3rd. We will be honoring this year’s seniors as well as alumni able to attend the meet.