Cheerleader
Hair up, bow on, red lipstick, pointed toes, and smile. What do all of these have in common? They are your basic cheerleader tools of survival, without them you’ll probably end up running laps outside in the scorching hot sun. It was my senior year of high school and I had just gotten the great news that I had made the competition and varsity cheer team. I was overwhelmed with joy, until I went to our first practice.
My senior year of cheerleading had to one of the most craziest seasons my high school has ever seen. Let’s just say it included, 5 girls getting kicked off right before states, 4 fights, 3 stunts falling, 2 babies and 1 almost broken neck. Disclaimer none of the cheerleaders had any babies! That would just be too crazy.
It was the beginning of June, and the first day of practice I walked in and everyone was rushing around trying to put the mats out before our head coach, Coach C and Coach Blocker came in. But me I wasn’t worried at all this, was my fourth year doing this. So me and the other senior sat back laughing watching all the freshman scrambling around trying to make sure their shoes were tied and their ponytail sat right at the edge of their hairlines. Automatically when Coach C walked in said “ Why aren’t you running laps? Let’s go ladies get up!” After running for ten minutes, we all gather on the mat in a circle and stretched. After stretching we all just talked and laughed, but our coach screamed at us to get up and get in line. “ This is not a social event, we are here to work hard and win” she said. “Now you all are going to do tucks until I say stop. Five, six, seven, eight!” (For those of you who don’t know what a tuck is it’s basically a backflip with no hands.) We looked at her in disbelief. She actually wanted us to do work on the first day of practice? That next day I could barely get out of bed my felt like someone injected my legs with numbing medicine.
Our first few weeks of practice was harsh. We all just learned our brand new choreography, in which we had to keep going through over and over again until each count was correct. My team had particular difficulty mastering our pyramid part of our routine. The pyramid section of our routine consisted of very intricate stunts, with flipping in air and hand switching, one wrong move could bring down the pyramid. Thank God I wasn’t a flyer, I most definitely did not trust these girls with my life. A few more weeks past and our routine was finally coming together. “Pointed toes, sharp arms, smile, LET’S GO LADIES!”, were the words that were on an endless loop in my head,but like they always say hard work does pay off. It was now the second week of July and it was time for our annual cheer camp trip. This year my coach booked us a cheer camp on a resort! Little did I know this would be the worst cheer camp experience ever.
We finally get to tropical city Destin, Florida. The resort we stayed on was less than a mile away from the beach. And the water of course was a crystal clear blue. The only down side of the resort was that we had to wake up everyday at 8am for our cheer camp. The cheer camp was a week long camp which consisted of about ten to twelve different high school cheer teams in which we would all learn some different stunt sequence and a few dances. And at the end we would have a little competition to showcase what we learned over the past week. Everything was going smoothly, we were learning all types of choreography, and watching the “elite” cheerleaders show us some really complex stunts, until it was our turn to try. To begin with we started our basic stunts, then gradually got to the more difficult stunts. Now there are usually four positions in a stunt. You have a back spot which is exactly what the name is, the person who is in the back. Then you have two bases, a side base, and a main base. The main base is usually the person who holds most of the weight which happened to be my position. But don’t feel bad for me I was happy to be a main base, because like I said before I could not be a flyer. The flyer is the girl who is thrown around like a rag doll. I used to be a flyer back in the old days, but now I like to stay on the ground and here is a prime example.
So here we are in the middle of practicing our pyramid, my stunt group was on the left side and Cameron’s stunt (the flyer) was on the left.We were doing a full up which is where the flyer twists her legs around, but her heel falls back and the back spot Allison basically backed out of the stunt. Remember when I said there would be an almost broken neck? Well Cameron fell at least 10 feet in the air straight on the ground. Her body hit the ground so hard, everyone was in shock that Allison didn’t catch her. Which resulted in Cameron having a concussion and having to wear a neck brace. And on top of that she was one of our best flyers.
Cameron was hauled off on a stretcher into an ambulance truck and we didn’t see her for the rest of the trip. That same night everyone went to their rooms early being that we had a long day except a few of my teammates had other plans. It was around 10:30pm and I was knocked out in my room. About 6 or 7 girls went into this random man’s hotel room who claimed he was having a birthday party. This “party” had alcohol, and men around the age of 35. The next morning our coaches found out and boy were those girls in for it. We were all called to her room and she was in tears because so many things could have went wrong. They could’ve gotten kiddnapped, drugged and raped, my coach explained as tears trickled down her face. For the rest of the camp our cheer coaches looked at us with disbelief and disappointment, but we had bigger problems to face, our principal.
A few days after we were home our principal showed up at one of our practices and her face was just like our coaches’ face, full of disappointment. She pulled aside the girls who were found in the room and gave them that long speech about how were supposed to represent our school and how lucky they were the situation wasn’t a tragic one. In the end all the girls had to sign a contract of some sort stating they will never do that again. Lucky for us they were given a slap on the wrist, because our first competition was a month away and our flyer Cameron was still in a neck brace.
"I eventually got over it, but it wasn’t until our cheer banquet when I realized winning isn’t everything."
It was now two weeks before our first competition and Cameron was finally out of the neck brace. We practiced for five hours three days a week including the Friday night football games. Our first competition wasn't so great we had 3 stunts fall, but we had won first place despite our stunts falling. Everything was going smoothly until we got to the end of October three weeks before we go to states. It was a Friday night and we were coming back from an away game, and one of my teammate Kiara was having a bad day because her and her father got into a fight, and he punched her in the face. One of the seniors Kayla was making a terrible joke about Kiara and her dad which made Kiara very heated. When we got off the bustard our school, all I could see was Kiara push Kayla into a car and my coaches were holding the two girls back. Meanwhile my friend Niyah punched her future sister-in law Anastasia (yes one my teammate was engaged!) in the face because she said something disrespectful about her mom. 11pm that night was an all out girls fight, and the parents were all there to witness it.
The following Monday as I said before 5 girls got kicked off. Now I know what you're wondering what happened to the fifth girl? Let’s just say she did some inappropriate things and got caught on camera. Anyway, here we are 3 weeks before states and we have a quarter of our team missing. We had to deconstruct our whole routine start to finish. States was approaching fast and everyone was on edge. The last week right before states everyone was exhausted from stressing and working hard on the routine. Most of us just wanted to get it over with.
It was now the day before states and our school cheered us on as went boarded our charter bus to Columbus, Georgia. That whole bus ride I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things that could possibly go wrong I was more nervous than ever.Before it was our turn to perform we had 10 minutes to get our lives together. The pressure was on. The intensity from the other teams practicing around us made it more intimidating. All I could remember is the moment right before we went on, we said a little prayer and we all told each other that we loved each other no matter what happens out there on the floor.“Ladies and gentlemen put your hands together for Richmond Hill High school, Ladies of the Hill!” We rushed out onto the floor thousands of people staring. I held my breath before the music started to play. As we were going through our routine everything was hitting. But when we got to the pyramid section of our routine the last part my side of the pyramid fell. My heart sank to the bottom of my heart, I had to keep smiling through the routine. I hit my final pose, but as soon as I stepped off that mate my eyes burst into tears. All of our hard work for nothing. My teammates tired to cheer me up but I wouldn’t listen. We ended up getting 12th place out of 15. I felt horrible. I eventually got over it, but it wasn’t until our cheer banquet when I realized winning isn’t everything.
At the banquet my cheer coach elected me as the mvp of the year she explained to everyone how hard I worked throughout the season and that she was proud of me, she even surprised us that she was having twins! (There goes the two babies I was talking about) It also maybe me realize that even though we had 5 girls get kicked off , 4 fights, 3 stunts, 2 babies and 1 almost broken neck we still pushed through our obstacles and never gave up.