I desperately loved the sport, but even basic maneuvers like half-tosses and pop tosses made my stomach drop, and left me bruised and battered after every practice. I’d never done any sort of preformative activity before, and learning how to put on a show whilst tossing a flag multiple feet above my head definitely humbled me. However, despite my fears of decapitation, I threw myself into learning everything I could. Eventually, the sensation of panic began to feel familiar to me. After dropping my flag on myself a couple of (read: many, many) times I started to be able to manage it and wrangle the paralyzing emotion into docility. Once I’d learned to master my fear, I was able to excel in earnest, and by my second month, I was able to do a half-toss