Good times and Good lucks

AYOP is always a magical week filled with competition, friendships, and laughter. Each year, the best of the best twirlers come together to perform their greatest routines and try and claim a national title for themselves. 2019 Nationals carried even more pressure as the top athletes would receive a spot on Team USA and travel to Holland in 2020! With each AYOP year comes forth the handing out of good lucks. A tradition that twirlers embrace as an act of friendship and sportsmanship. This year, we decided to reflect upon some of our favorite and craziest good lucks we received at nationals! Here they are:

1. “Ace The Competition“

A pack of baton twirling inspired playing cards. These could come in handy for long competitions when you need something to do. Plus, we had to applaud the pun!

2. Binder

This is such a cute idea that an be useful in the future. What was given out as an empty binder, was given with the further directions to fill it up with memories and photographs. Perfectly suited for AYOP, as the week is full of memories and fun times!

3. ”Don’t Sweat It”

Sweat towels are always a practical and smart gift, especially with the slick floors that Notre Dame happens to have. A personal favorite was a Billie Eilish Inspired towel that said, “You should see me in a crown.”

4. Yum!

It would be hard to add any sweet treat to this list, as Candy is a common good luck gift. Nevertheless, we had to add a spot for edible cookie dough! Not only is this a unique gift, but also a very tasty post competition treat. Another interesting snack we saw were individual servings of chips and salsa!

5. “Stick to It”

A very practical and fun goodie is wallet stickers for phones. These silicon pockets stick to any case and can hold both cards and cash. A perfect place to stash pretzel money!

6. Massager

We all know AYOP can be a rough week, and so we thought a massager was an ingenious idea. This is amazing and can come quite in handy after a sore day of twirling.

7. ”You can DYI it“

DIY crafts are always a fun gift, especially if it is a DIY rocket ship. This idea is an out of this world idea and we love it!

8. “It’s Charming”

2019 must have been the year of charms! We saw crown charms, baton charms, and even charms engraved with people‘s titles. If you collected all of these, you may have an entire charm bracelet by now!

9. “sqWISHING You Lots of Luck”

Stuffed animals are always popular for younger girls, but also can be a fun things for older girls. We had a teenager mention she got a lucky three-legged pig stuffed animal as a gift. She really wanted us to clarify it was indeed not a real pig lol.

10. Twirkers!

This year we brought our own good lucks! We put together fun sticky hands to go with our splat theme, and made enough for all Advanced age divisions!

We hope you all had a good time at AYOP filled with loads of good luck. Even if you didn’t receive these gifts, Notre Dame could had possibly given you the luck of the Irish! Hope you had as much as fun as we did at Nationals 2019, and hope to see you next year! Now good luck in the 2020 season!!! xoxo, The Twirkers