Welcome Home, Jade Carey

Late Wednesday afternoon, my friend Suki and I walked over to the football stadium at Oregon State University a few blocks away. Jade Carey was home from Paris with a gold medal in team gymnastics, and a bronze for her vaults. Her friends and fans in Corvallis were gathering to celebrate her return.

Watching the best gymnasts in the world on TV these last couple of weeks has been fabulous. Incredible, really, especially when a gymnast’s foot lands squarely on a 4-inch-wide beam after jumping from a springboard a few feet away or flipping and twisting 10-feet in the air before landing on both feet without tipping over. Amazing.

Jade competed in Tokyo too. Won gold in the floor exercise. In Paris, she wasn’t as lucky. Her floor routine included a fall off the corner of the mat. Making what’s called a ‘mistake’ like that is impossible to recover from in terms of points, but I imagine it’s even worse knowing millions of people around the world have watched.

But Jade did recover. She went on to execute three extraordinary vaults for a bronze medal. I didn’t want to miss welcoming her home.

Suki and I arrived just as the OSU band started to play. A big crowd including TV crews, cheerleaders, city police, campus police, and a whole lot of people wearing orange, was already in place, clapping and singing with the excited energy that comes when someone famous is scheduled to arrive.

As we stood on the corner, three little girls came up behind us, jumping up and down, squealing, hardly able to wait for Jade’s arrival. Someone must have told them that Jade’s OSU teammates were directly across the street. The little girls stopped fidgeting and stared in awe, trying to decide whether they could run over and wait for Jade with them. They finally did.

In the fifth picture, notice the little girl on the far left with the big orange bow in her hair. I wish I’d seen her when I was taking the picture. Then watch the 47-second video of her at the end. Worth it!

This is what happens when little girls have big girls and older women to look up to. I wonder what they’ll do in the future.

Anything they want.  

She’s making an O shape for OSU