Cheerleading Case

Cheerleading

Since 7th grade, I have been on the my school's cheer team. After several years of cheerleading, I'm not that bad at it. Actually you could say I'm pretty good. It took a lot of dedication and hard work for me to get where I am. Many times, I even felt like quitting, and I'm very glad I didn't because all that work did pay off.

Cheerleading isn't just about standing on the sidelines yelling words, opposed to what many people think. There is much more to it. We all have to do the same thing, at the exact same time, which takes hours of practice and teamwork. Cheerleading is also very dangerous. We lift people very high up and do many cool tricks in the air. This requires a lot of strength and trust. Cheerleading is not easy at all.

When I first tried out for cheer, I had no idea it would be this hard. We had practice everyday of the week. At first, I was terrible at it, but eventually with practice I started getting better. The coaches taught us all the cheers, which weren't easy to keep track of. I practiced at home so I could remember them. We learned how to stunt, and I discovered I had no arm strength. I had to train very hard to be able to get through the stunt without passing out. I took gymnastic lessons outside of school too, to get even better. At home, I stretched and did my splits to become more flexible.

I am still doing cheer in order to improve at it. Now that I'm on a high school team, it's way harder. During the summer we had practice almost everyday of the week in the morning, so I could barely ever sleep in. We even went to the same conditioning camp as the football players! That was a big challenge and I felt like passing out many times, but I sucked it up and pushed through it. Now I am a lot stronger and cheer is easier, so it was worth it.

Because of all that effort I put in, I learned how to be the good cheerleader