Two months ago, my daughter broke two of her fingers. For most people that’s a painful
inconvenience. As a cheerleader, it was as devastating as it was painful. To give you an understanding of this, I have
to give you a little bit of cheerleading 101.
Cheerleading isn’t what it used to be. Have you ever seen the movie Bring it On starring Kirsten Dunst and
Gabrielle Union? If you have then you should know competitive cheerleading is
accurately depicted in that movie. If you haven’t seen the movie, you should
because it’s cute! Today’s cheerleaders don’t just stand there and yell out
some cheers while doing a few arm movements. They dance, they jump, they kick,
they do stunts that require some of them to be balanced in the air by others
and they do often complicated tumbling passes with names like round off back
hand spring step out. And they do all of these things as a united team with one
goal in mind; to win a National championship title.
When she first started competing three years ago, my
daughter couldn’t even turn a cartwheel. Now, she’s one of those girls doing
round off back handsprings. It was during a competition in January while doing
a back handspring that she landed wrong and broke two fingers. This wasn’t just
any competition either. It was the competition in which they were attempting to
qualify for the right to compete at Nationals which would take place at the end
of March in Anaheim California.
Despite this fall my daughter took, the team ended up
qualifying. Whether or not she would be physically able to participate was
questionable. Initially, the doctor was optimistic that, because of her age,
she could make a full recovery in just three weeks. That wasn’t the case. It
took nearly eight weeks and multiple physical therapy sessions for her to
recover. While we waited for her to recover, she went to every practice and
participated to the best of her ability and constantly hounded me and her
coaches to let her tumble and do her stunts before the doctor felt she was
ready. Of course we all said no, but she was determined to cheer again and even
more determined to make it to Nationals.
She was cleared to compete just one week prior to the date
Nationals was scheduled. With so little time to spare before the competition,
she wasn’t able to return to do the four tumbling passes she’d been doing prior
to the injury. Instead, she had one pass at the beginning of the routine, the
first one actually, and it put her front and center. She would be setting the
tone for the rest of the routine and I was as nervous about that as I was about
watching her compete for the first time after an injury.
On March 28th, we loaded up the family and headed
down to Anaheim to vie for the National title in the large varsity novice
division. The squad was supposed to compete that night against ten other teams.
Of the eleven teams competing, only the top four would move to the finals. I
say they were supposed to compete, but Mother Nature had other plans. Just half
an hour before the team was supposed to take the stage, a 5.1 magnitude
earthquake struck, forcing the rescheduling of the rest of the competition to
the next day.
On March 29th, we headed back to the Anaheim
Convention Center after spending a few hours at Disneyland that we followed
with a long nap. This time, nothing kept the girls from competing. At the
conclusion of the competition, the qualifying teams were announced in no
particular order. When it came time to announce the qualifiers in our division,
all of us held our breaths. After three other teams were announced ahead of
ours, things were looking marginally hopeful. Our name was the last called and
athletes and parents alike brought down the house with our cheers of joy. The
scores and placement of the teams wasn’t announced, but we were told that the
following day we would compete in reverse order of our finish from the qualifying
round. In other words, if we were in first place at the end of the first round,
we’d compete last in the second round. After getting the score sheet, the coach
didn’t want to tell us where we’d qualified. He would only say the scores were
close.
Sunday, March 30th, we made one final trip to the
Anaheim Convention Center for the last round of the last competition of the
season. The first thing many of us parents did was run to the posted scheduled
to see our performance order. On seeing we would compete last, I was elated, as
were those parents around me. We were standing in first place. All we had to do
was hold on.
When the girls took the floor for that final routine, I
might have been as nervous as they were, but I watched my daughter with pride.
For the second day in a row, she hit her opening tumbling pass and all of the
stunts and jumps.
At the awards ceremony a few hours later, my nerves were
even more frazzled as I waited to hear whether or not they’d hung on to win. As
division after division was called, and we still weren’t among them, I became
even more anxious. By the time our division was called to the floor, I’d bitten
all of my fingernails to the nub and was jostling my legs up and down and
probably driving those around me nuts. I felt confident we’d gotten at least second place. Of the four teams, I thought it came down to us and a team called
Arlington. Placements were announced in reverse order and we weren’t fourth or
third. The last two teams standing were us and Arlington. When the other team
was announced in second place, and I knew we’d won, I could barely stay in my
seat to wait for the official announcement. As that announcement was being
made, I shot down the bleachers, screaming all the way, with my husband and
older daughter in tow and doing the same.
My cheerleader was all smiles as the team hugged and cried
and posed for pictures with their trophy and banner, gold medals strung around
their necks. As I watched, I reflected on the last few months. After everything
my child had gone through to get to that point, I wanted that title for her as
much as she did. To see her dream come true, to see the lows she’d gone through
to earn it suddenly pay off, made me happier than this writer can describe. It
also made me realize there might be a lesson in there for me.
At one point in the season, we thought my daughter might be
done. We didn’t think she would make it Nationals beyond the role of spectator.
Despite what I thought, my daughter never thought she wouldn’t be there. In her
mind, there was no question she’d get there and when she did, she would play to
win. Even when the odds were stacked against her, she believed she could do it.
She never stopped wanting and she never gave up and it paid off.
Who would have thought a fourteen year old cheerleader could
teach me a lesson in how to persevere in your dreams?
This is awesome. I read about it in your twitter as it was happening, but getting the full story here was much better. I'm so happy for your daughter and you, this is really cool:) Congratulations!
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