I can't remember a time when I wasn't a cheerleader. My earliest memory of having a uniform is probably when I was about 4. Football or basketball, it didn't matter. I was bit early and even though I wasn't the best at it, I gave it my all. Cheering for intramural games, then graduating to being a Mountaineer cheerleader, then finally cheering at the Varsity level. Some of my best memories are on the sideline. Great friends, lots of laughter, some tears...I turned 16 on the football field, realized that my Mom really was one of my best friends on the basketball court, and grew up a lot in a couple of years.
Today, I sat and judged a grade school cheerleading competition. I was reminded again of why I loved it so much. Those little girls, in their little uniforms and their shiny pom-poms and their hairbows that seemed bigger than their heads, with those cork-screw curls from oh so many rollers (ok, most of them wear hairpieces now, but I can still remember sleeping with those rollers in...)Those smiles, those facial expressions, that shaking of the head as they yell the words as loud as their little voices will let them.
If you don't understand cheerleading, you never will. I know a lot of people who don't think it's a sport. They haven't seen those girls fall out of pyramids and crack their heads on the wooden floors, or seen floor burn on knees from falling during tumbling passes. Of doing wall pushups and jump builders and conditioning (running bleachers, laps around the football field, and up the hill by the Board of Ed building makes me want to convulse right now, 15 years later.) And if you do understand it, you know where I'm coming from. You're the kind who can't sit still at a ballgame, who has to yell and clap no matter who the team is. Once a cheerleader, always a cheerleader.
Tomorrow, I'll stand in the bleachers and watch my favorite little cheerleader, all grown up. Her last 14th regional competition. I think I may go cry now... but tomorrow, I'll be cheering Kami on. Cause that's what cheerleaders do.
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