Cheerleading Competition: A Tale of Fear and Triumph

October 25th, the day of the 2014 Beach District Cheerleading Competition and our chance to go to Regionals. I woke up that morning with a knot in my stomach because I knew our time had come. We worked so hard those past three months to perfect our routine; we knew we were ready to win. As we were in the waiting area for our team to get called, my heart was pounding in fear and excitement. While watching the other teams on the projector, which I would prefer not to do. In a cheerleading competition I worry if the performing team is perfect, because the competition is more serious. Just my luck, it's our turn to warm-up. At that point, I'm terrified, my body became numb. I hate when my body does that because I feel as if I would pass out. Our

first task in warm-ups are our jumps and cheer. Warm-ups were not too bad because it allowed time before performing, but for some odd reason the groups were moving through pretty fast.

Now, time for the final warm-up stunt and to run through our routine.

We had a short amount of time in each area, so we needed to use our time wisely. We ran through the routine twice and moved on to our stunts. I was really excited; I had a great stunt group and knew we would be flawless. We started the warm-ups; one, two, three times we failed - to my surprise. I didn't know if we did something wrong or we were all just nervous. We attempted it one more time, and finally it was a success. Everyone had warmed up and was patiently waiting to perform next. Once the other teams' music stopped, my heart dropped. In that exact moment, I knew we were next. Before we went on the floor, we did our favorite chant to get everyone's energy up in excitement. Our school is called and the time had come to go out there and give it our all. When we go out on the floor, everything is loud and bright. Our routine had started and we are pumped. Our team was immaculate with all the motions, smiling, yelling the cheer with excitement and walking to my first stunt. We set to do the stunt and the cheerleader goes up and I caught her foot. The stunt made it and then she fell. At that moment, I felt like the world stopped. Everything we did - all of our hard work, the long practices - just went down the

drain.

That day I experienced failure - I failed the team. I didn't accomplish the job. I tried so hard not to cry, because I knew I had to finish out the rest of the routine strong. As soon as it was over, I ran off crying hysterically. Only a cheerleader could know how it felt for it not to be perfect; it was the worst feeling ever. Even though another stunt fell as well and there was a tumble fall, none of that changed that I disappointed the team. The only thing that did mattered was that my stunt fell and there was nothing I could do to fix it. I kept thinking about all the things I could have done to save it, but then I realized there was nothing I could have done. I gave it my all, one hundred and ten percent, but it wasn't enough. That night we walked away with 5th place, and our chance for Regionals was gone. All I could do was cry and tell myself there's always next year. I then realized, sometimes you have to lose or fail in order to make yourself stronger and better.