Eileen Maul and I shared many of the best parts of our lives together. From our time spent as teammates on the Santana Gymnastics team where she led us to multiple championship victories, and then convinced me to join diving, a sport we both made careers out of, to coaching her in her senior year as a Sultan where I learned as much from her as she did from me.

When she graduated from high school, we went on to coach side by side at Steve Butcher’s “South Cal Gymnastics”, and eventually found our way into diving shows where we ended up spending an entire summer performing in Northern Italy together. Our time spent seeing Europe is still the memory we both cherished so much. So many stories that would bring us to tears of laughter. “Gee Eileen, I didn’t know a bee could sting you there!??!” – or – “Hey Becca, hop on the back of my tiny 50cc motorcycle and let’s ride to work in 80 mph traffic without helmets!” She finished her career in shows working in Las Vegas at the Dueling Pirates Stunt Spectacular. She made the perfect princess who could fight musclebound pirates, tumble, do high falls and trapeze, and all of the other things a princess normally does in the real world.

The brightest smile is now gone from our lives. I will miss her, her wiener dogs will miss her, her incredible sidekick, George, will miss her, and I am hopeful that she is up there watching over all of the world’s acrobats and mysteriously helping them to succeed in whatever they want to accomplish, then cheering with them in her own special way when they pull it off!