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 !

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!

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 !

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.

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.