Go to tryouts. Agonize over if you made the team. Make the team. Pray to the powers that be (mostly the cheer Gods) that you’ll find a new family on your new team. Learn the choreography, if its not tight, its not right. Go home, work on the choreography some more, go to bed and wake up not able to move. Practice tumbling in the yard, do some fundraisers, go to practice, learn stunt sequences, choreograph the tumbling pass. Be ecstatic that you get point flyer, or front line during jumps, or the final tumbling pass. Get the routine put together, work out stunts till you’ve hit the ground, or been hit by a flyer so many times that your group dare not drop it again. Leave practice with more battle wounds. Repeat for hundreds of hours, five days a week until competition day. Glitter, bows, hair spray, uniforms, put it all on, take one last look in the mirror, practice a few facials, hit the warm up mats. Tumble, stunt, mentally prepare for the real thing. Stand back stage, circle up, pray, chant, cheer. Its your turn. Walk onto the mats, happier than you’ve ever been. This is your time to shine. For the next 2:30 your team owns the audience. The team hits stunts, tumbles and jumps better than ever before. You see your coach celebrating every time something goes perfectly. The final pyramid goes up. The music ends. Everyone celebrates. Screaming. You run off the mat. All the nervousness you had before walking on the mat melts away. For 2:30 you were the best. Watch the other teams, cheer them on. See some that might be better than you, but you know that you’re going to keep working till you’re the best. Awards. Maybe you take home a gold medal, maybe you don’t take home anything. Either way, you’ve gone out there and done your best and that smile that cheerleaders are so famous for is painted on your face. You did it. Time to do it again.
(Source: peacelove-cheer, via fluent-cheer)
