Horses aside, softball was always my sport. I had given so much of my life to the school team, but to put it lightly the new coach’s technique didn’t match up with my learning method. In the middle of the last game during the regional tournament my spirit was crushed. I walked off the field and my mom and dad met me at the dugout. Without a word I grabbed my things and left. The three of us walked in silence down the left field fence and around the outfield to the car as my former teammates took the field. My parents had raised me to never quit. Even when I decided not to return to basketball from summer break, we had quite the throw down at my house. I walked off the field, and choked back tears. I knew when my dad met me at the gate of the dugout, I wasn’t just being a sensitive teenage girl…
I walked off the softball field and picked up pom poms. Seriously…what was I thinking? It was basically a social experiment. I was a self-proclaimed “cheerleader hater”, but I had always wondered what it would be like to wear the pleated skirt and do dance routines with toe touches. Nearly ever girl in the south is given a cheer uniform as a toddler that represents her parents favorite teams. Mine was crimson and said “Alabama” inside the shape of a megaphone. In the spirit of checking things of my bucket list (even if no one in the world knew it was on my bucket list), I gave it a try!
Through a strange series of events (all the girls in my class quitting all of their sports), and a little rule (there were three spots allotted to rising senior cheerleaders), I basically walked on to the squad. Wow! I still remember the day we got our uniforms. We closed the door to Mrs. Reeves classroom and blocked the little rectangular window with paper. Uniforms started flying and all 15 of us were changing and trying. As our first uniforms were all on – the white “Patriots” uniform – several of the girls were looking in the mirrors saying, “I’m going to need to have this skirt hemmed, it’s too short.” I could have sworn people could see my bum from a mile away!!! I had never considered myself to be conservative when it came to skirt lengths, but this was a whole new world. Needless to say, I DIDN’T have any of my skirts hemmed.
So I’m sure you’re wondering – how did the social experiment really go? Well…I actually enjoyed the sport of cheerleading… I think if you had brought my softball team in to cheer it would have been much more fun. I was accustomed to discipline. In ball sports you don’t talk during practice. These girls never shut up! They talked back to the coach and they gave each other attitude. I would go through entire practices without saying a word. It was difficult to be the age of seniority, but the youngest girls on the squad were teaching me the ropes. At times the girls were definitely hurtful, as most catty teenage girls will be, but in all fairness to them I had built a wall around myself – I did my own thing and was never particularly warm with them either. So many preppy girls in one place completely overwhelmed me.
We stepped on the bus to our first away game, and one of the girls handed me a teddy bear and a card. The entire squad had signed it and they all began to cheer for me. Every girl on the squad had cheered for years, and they were proud (and a bit thankful) that I had put in all the work and picked up the sport halfway decent.
Overall I would never take back the experience. Check it off the list. I’ve thrown girls up in the air, done toe touches in front of my entire school, competed in individual and group cheer competitions, and even done a back handspring (big deal for a girl who still can’t do a cartwheel).
Lesson for the day: Do what you can now, because you might never again have the chance!
Soli deo gloria,
Sarah
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