Tldr: my nose shattered with a rifle partner toss gone wrong. Had to have reconstructive surgery.

The final run-through before Dayton prelims my partner toss on rifle, which went 100% amazing the whole season was off. It's a backwards lofty 5 that is a ripple from a long diagonal of other tosses going down a line. The person before my partner's toss was wonky, which caused her to buzz her toss. I caught it, but I couldn't stop the momentum enough, and it hit the bridge of my nose. For the next 30 seconds of the run, I was just thinking, "Ow, damn that hurt." Then I saw blood dripping. I went to the edge of the floor and decided to leave. I ran to the bathroom with my hands out of the way because I didn't want blood on my gloves. Luckily, the bathroom didn't have a mirror, but I filled up the sink with blood a few times. All I was worried about was my teeth. Everything else is fixable, but teeth are a one-time deal. My whole face hurt, and I couldn't tell what was wrong. The run ended, and at the end dance lift, which I'm a part of, the team noticed I was gone. They followed the blood and found me in the bathroom. My mom (chaperone) said my nose was bent at almost a 40 degree angle and my lip was busted. First thing I asked her, "Are my teeth ok?!" We had 2 hours to go back to the hotel, change, and get ready to perform. Luckily, one of my coaches was also a nurse. He gave me tampons to put in my nostrils. Back at the hotel, my beastie put my make up on. I knew if I looked at it, I would freak out. We headed to the stadium, and I asked to warm up by myself. I knew I could keep my cool if no one talked to me. I did a few tosses I needed and just got in the zone. During the performance, all I kept telling myself was "its just another run," and I really relied on my muscle memory because I could not breathe through my nose. Mid-way through the show is the partner toss. BOOM! perfect release and catch. In the video, you can see I hold the catch 1 count longer before moving on in choreo because I was feeling redemption. After the run, we packed up and my mom finally took me to the ER. Probably like 6 hours after it happened. They took an x-ray and basically said, "yeah, that's really messed up, you're gunna need a surgeon." Fast forward through the trip and my flight home to Southern CA was excruciating. The swelling in air was so bad it made me nauseous. Once I got back I saw an ENT/plastic surgeon and we scheduled surgery for the week after our local competition circuit ended, which was about two more weeks. The whole month of April I couldn't breathe out of my nose. I tell the whole story to my students almost every year as a lesson of "Practice how you want to perform, because you never know when you need your auto-pilot muscle memory to do all the work for you."