I was ten years old when I was introduced to competitive cheerleading for the first time. For the next five years, I would push myself harder every day to better myself, not only for self satisfaction but for the good of my team and coaches. During my first two years of cheering, I mostly enjoyed the people I met there, people I considered family, and looked forward to cheering with them in the next coming seasons. I made great connections with certain coaches and people involved in the gym. I always looked forward to going to cheer and spending time with the people I felt most happy with.
But what I loved most about it was the competitions. No matter where it was I would always look forward to it. The moment at the end of the routine when we knew we had no deductions was the best feeling in the world. My love for the sport slowly faded as I progressed with my cheerleading journey, as it got harder, the coaches got more strict and the expectations increased. It was no longer for fun. I did not want to leave the sport that had been my life. My 2022-2023 season was my last season and although I loved most parts, I was slowly losing motivation for the sport. As I thought about it more, I decided I’d take a try at school cheer. It was not my favorite. I felt out of place and I truly missed my old cheer friends. As this cheer season has been going on, I see posts about cheer competitions that I have missed out on since I decided to take a break from cheerleading this season. It makes me feel left out.
At the end of last year’s cheer season my mental health was not good. I was struggling with bad anxiety at the time. I refused to travel and hated going to far competitions. I felt sick all the time, making me anxious about getting sick. I took a year to get better and continued my cheer journey but things slowly started to go down from there. Early in the track season last year I felt pain in my hip and at the time I was doing cheer and track going straight from track practice to cheer most nights. This schedule made my education hard to keep up with. I started falling behind because when I was home I wanted to rest. Early summer my hip got really bad and I went to the doctor. They ended up finding something wrong with my growth plate and the doctor took me out of sports for the season and put me into physical therapy. At the end of the summer, when I was slowly getting better, my aunt had passed away from cancer. That was really hard on me and my family. Following the death of my aunt, my uncle had passed away only four months after his own wife had passed. As someone could see how hard this would be, I was devastated. Now that 2024 is here, I am still filled with grief but this year has been great.
As I am reflecting on the time I’ve been out I realized I’m not productive without cheer. If someone were to ask me if I would go back to cheer, I would go back in a heartbeat. With all the negatives that come with it, friendship, comfort and happiness overpowers the bad. I feel comfortable in the cheer environment and ever since I’ve been out all season due to an injury I think about how I took it for granted and missed it heavily. In these next few months I am working on building my endurance and skills to come back better than I was before.
