Sunday, September 16, 2012
Personal Benefits
Cheering for the last 5 years has taught me a lot. There is sooo much I take out of it and the people you meet you end up being friends with them for a very long time. Being in any kind of sport and being committed really changes a person and how they grow. I have learned to manage my time and to give myself enough time to leave my house or to get ready in the morning or before a game or a competition so I am not late. If your ever late.. well then your kinda out of luck. I have learned to be more responsible and mature. I have learned how to take control of situations when things get out of hand, I leaned to be a better leader and teach others as well as learn. I can admit to my mistakes and tell when I am doing something wrong. And being more out going and just not caring about what any one else has to think. I have also learned not to be shy in front of a large amount of people. Performing in front of an audience I taught myself to be comfortable and myself. Never would you think getting up in front of 2,000 people and dancing in the middle of rewards at sectionals doing the dance single ladies by Beyonce!! Without cheerleading I know for a fact I would not be who I am today !
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Competitions
Every cheerleader knows that the most stressful months of cheerleading is Decemeber through the beginning of February. Competetion season. 2 and a half months competing for the same place as everyone else. Then having it all come down to the first weekend in February.. State. Every cheerleaders dream is to go to state and to win or even place. Only the best of the best get to go and that is determined at sectionals. The last weekend in January. Competition season usually starts around October sometimes even earlier to learn your rutine and then as days of practice go by you end up changing your rutine about 700 times. The time and effort we all put into competing is unbelieveable. We practice every day sometimes twice a day or even have weekend practices to make sure we have it right. Then the next day you wake up early and it is 3 minutes that will cost you everything you have ever worked for. Getting that first place means everything and you know when you nail a perfect rutine because you walk off that mat crying. So much hard work gets put into every count every stunt every move every motion every word/scream that goes into a rutine. 3 minutes to prove yourself seems like forever but in the end it all pays off. Before every cheerleader competes you have a warm up room, and competitions aren't show up and compete.. your there ALL day long. You get there and your half asleep and then your coach tells you to get ready.. hair... make up... uniform on... ready to go even if you get there at 8:00 a.m. and you don't compete till 4:00p.m. your still ready to go. Either the squad is held in a gym or a classroom and you sit there and wait and wait and wait. About 2 hours before you compete your coach will want to mark through everything and stretch and then do somethings like everything but stunts or everything but tumbling and make sure everything is going smoothly. After about doing that a hundred times... It's your offical warm up. You go to a seperate gym no where near the competition area and there are 3 different mats. Mat number one is your tumbling mat, you warm up tumbling here. Mat number 2 is your stunting mat, this is where you warm up every stunt in your rutine and have about eh... 2 minutes to do it. If it doesn't hit... you hope for the best and move on to mat number three. Mat number three is the mat where all the anxiety comes out and the nerves, this mat is your full run through mat. You do your whole rutine as if you were going on right then in there. Each mat has a time limit usually 2 minutes for the first two mats then 5 minutes for the full run through mat. And this is exactly the reason why you practice 2 hours before you actually compete... so you don't mess up everything competely during warm ups. After that you line up by the door to enter in the gym and that is when you are absolutely terrified and you can't stand still to save your life. The doors open and every single person in that gym as there eyes on you and nothing else. The judges stare you down like its go time and they watch every little move you make. You step off the mat and your just about done. There is no hope unless your rutine is amazing and there aren't drops or falls or touches and everything is synchronized to the T. 3 minutes on that mat and thats all it takes. Then after you wait till awards and that is when everyone is just freaking out beacause you want to know what place you got. During competition season every one on your squad is cranky, tired, on their period, pissed off, hates the world, has a ton of homework, stressed out, crying all the time because there is just to much going on and there is a lot on their plate. Worst time to make a cheerleader anger... worst! Aside from all the blood, sweat, tears, and hard work everything pays off and you just have memories after memories of what happens and what you were feeling like. I can name every feeling that I ever felt in my 5 years of competing. Cheerleading becomes your life those months. If you get hurt competing you keep going no matter what you can be full of blood and they will not stop the rutine you push through it or else you just threw away everything you worked for by stopping. "When football players get hurt, everything stops. We wait. They walk off the field. If we get hurt competing we finish and worry about it later." spoken like a true cheerleader.. hahah so true though!
Monday, September 10, 2012
Being A Team
The number one thing in cheerleading is being a team. You do everything together and you take so much out of it and learn from each one of your team mates. You fight with them like they are your own siblings, you cry to them or with them, your with them more than your with your own family. Your cheer team or any kind of team is seriously your second family. The 5 years I have cheered my number one supporter (next to my parents) was my squad. They cheer you on, they give you confidencde, they got your back, they stick with you, and your with them forever. While being captain I realized that almost every desicion I made was with my team or my teams imput on something. With cheerleading being an almost year around sport you do everything with eachother and you know that they will always be there. You learn as a team, you compete as a team, you cry as a team, you laugh as a team, you go out as a team, and you go in as a team you do everything with your team. Those girls/boy will always be a part of me for the rest of my life. I met my bestfriends in cheerleading and im still bestfriends with them today. Always put your team first !
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Tumbling
Cheerleading isn't all just about looking cute and screaming go fight win, theres more to it. We cheer, dance, stunt, and most of all we tumble! No we arent like gymnastics but we just do the tumbling part and that is really hard at times. Tumbling causes a lot of injuries to cheerleaders. Most of our injuries is becasue of tumbling, it looks really cool to watch but it takes a lot of hard work in the gym to get to where we are. First there is your back hand spring and then your flip flop, then multiple flip flops, back tuck, lay-out, finally you got your full! Tumbling is all upper body strength and strength in your legs. Learning how to tumble at an older age is a lot harder than it is when your younger. I promise! Tumbling never use to be a big part of cheerleading till about 4 years ago (not for high school at least). Now your whole varisty cheer squad needs to have tumbling more than flip flops in order to make it to state! It gets very competitive now. There is more to cheerleading than you think and a lot of this requires a lot of muscle! Most sports your running back and forth... but this one we lift eachother and ourselves.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Stunting
Another way of being a good cheerleader is stunting. Stunting is a huge part of cheerleading, and helps keep the crowd entertained. Stunting is when your backspot and bases up the flyer up in the air and the flyer does really cool things. There are many different kinds of stunts like doing a half, extension, liberty, heal stretch, aerobesque, ram, scale, scorpion, bow and arrow, quepie, chin-chin, there are also pyramids that look soooo cool! It is when all stunt groups come together and the flyers connect and they do some crazy things like throw the flyer to a different stunt group and have her twist a certain way or lift other flyers up with other flyers under her as the base. Stunting is all about what you make it to be and how creative you can get with pyramids and in the end all the hard work pays off because everything looks perfect and neat. You also have basket tosses (my personal favorite). The bases put their hands together holding each others wrists to form a square and the flyer steps on the top of their hands with the balls of her feet... being VERY light weight holding herself up and keeping her chest up and then the bases throw her with everything they have and the flyer will either do a toe touch or something really cool in the air for example, a kick double or single. Basket tosses are very dangerous and it is really important to catch your flyer even if she's flying the other way! Any kind of stunts are really dangerous and it is always important you practice them because you do not want to go out looking like an idiot and falling in front of everyone.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Positions
Being a good cheerleader also requires you to know your position and to make sure you do it right. You have 3 different positions you can be, base, flyer or backspot (sometimes frontspot) Being a base is all about lifting the flyer and making sure she is not going to fall and eat shit and to lift her up and keep her steady. Without the bases (yeah its plural meaning you have a secondary base and a main base) the flyer will not get up. To be a base you really do need to have good upper body strength and all the lifting is in your legs. If you use your arms to lift your going to have some serious back pain (believe me!). Being a base you always need to catch your flyer no matter what , even if the stunt is falling or your coming down from a stunt. Next you have your flyer (top girl) that goes up and hits whatever it is that she needs to do, the flyer seems to get all the attention because she is the one getting thrown in the air and doing the tricks. Being a flyer from experience is alot of work, you may think its not but it is, the flyer needs to hold her weight and make sure she is tight. Squeeze everything you have in your body and smile! don't forget to smile or you will end up looking scared (and that is not cute). If the flyer falls it can most of the time be her fault if she isn't doing what she is suppose to do. That is why it is very important to communicate with your team mates and help each other out. Finally you have your backspot, the backspot is THE most important person in a stunt group in my opinion. The backspots job is to lift the ankles of the flyer and to pull up and relief some of the weight for the bases. Especially when the flyer comes down from a stunt (cradle, full down, or double etc) the backspot catches under the arm pits and makes sure that flyers head and top part of her body is safe. key thing to always remember... NEVER LET YOUR FLYER HIT THE GROUND!!... ever. Being dropped sucks and it hurts really bad. The flyer can get seriously injured ( it has happend) that is why you work together and communicate. Being a cheerleader takes alot of work, more than people give us credit for...
Monday, August 27, 2012
How do I know?
The reason why I know how to be a good cheerleader is because I was Captain of my cheer squad my senior year of high school and I cheered for 5 years, danced majority of my life and did poms for a couple years. Being Captain taught me a lot about my team and helping each other out and getting to know each individual team mate. All my years of cheerleading there is something that I take from each year that I learn from and that helps me become a better cheerleader watching my Captains in the past and learning from each one of my team mates and working my ass off to get to where I wanted to be. Being cheer Captain is a lot of responsibility and you have to believe in your team even when times come to tough moments. You always have to motivate your squad and stay positive through thick and thin. Especially when it comes to competition season and your not winning anything you have to a bitch to get everyone to listen and to bring them back up. Being Captain really taught me SO much more about what kind of person I am and how I act towards others in different situations. I really took a lot out of it.
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