Spending Valentine's Day with an Olympian

or "Amanda is once again in awe of people with athletic ability"

When my friend messaged me at 4pm on Valentine’s Day to ask if I had plans that night I replied, "I was gonna make soup." She said that UCLA and PENN State were having a woman’s gymnastics meet at 8pm and tickets were $54.

So I made my soup earlier then I had initially planned and drove to pick her up to go watch Jordan Chiles compete.

Prior to this I had never been to a gymnastics meet that wasn't at a Little Gym and I'm fairly certain those don't even count because those deadass could have just been birthday parties. I have had friends that did gymnastics growing up and even one who was on track to go to the Olympics before she retired due to continuous injuries, but I never really got to pursue it. A money thing most likely because most things from my childhood came down to money things. And aside from the Olympics and chanting "USA! USA!"at my TV whenever Team USA competed, I don't follow much collegiate gymnastics outside of the occasional viral floor routine or when my social media and sports worlds collide via Livvy Dunne complaining about the scoring system.

But I love women's sports and I had never been to a sporting event at UCLA so I was excited to go and see what these girls could do.

First off it turned out to be Pride Night, which is funny because this is the second time my friend and I have gone to a sporting event that surprised us with a Pride Night because for some reason women's sports (the first time was an LA Sparks game) do not indicate on the ticket sites that it’s a theme night. It was nice though they had pride flags all over the pavilion and the student LGBT org was onsite with a table with pins and stickers of various pride flags so I went to ask for a Bisexual pride flag pin. I was then recognized by one of the students who asked for a photo. She was very sweet but in my brain I was just thinking "wow good thing I'm out otherwise this could have been weird." All good though I got my pin and a bi pride sticker.