This weekend was full of cheerleading related exercises for me. Friday night was our homecoming game. Saturday was the dance, so we had setup, concessions, coat check, and tear down. On top of that, it was our 50th anniversary, so we had a few obligations there as well. Bottom line, I spent the entire day at the school, from just after 9:00 am (I was a few minutes late), to just before 11:00 pm.
So Sunday was my day. It started off as all Sundays do, with my cheerleading team’s practice, this week at the new and improved time of 9:30 am. This meant I should have left my house by 8 am. I was late, left at 8:30, had to drive fast, but I made it just in time.
Practice started out with us warming up some tumbling. I’m doing a very limited amount of tumbling in this routine: two to a tuck and a toe touch tuck, nothing too hard. But I wanted to warm up my running so I hopped in the running line, and threw a few basic passes: a round off handspring tuck, a punch front round off hand spring tuck, and a few roundoff handspring layouts. Then came the moment of truth. I’m old, and haven’t thrown in about 6 months, since tryouts for the team, but out came the full. My timing was on, so I wasn’t too worried about getting over, but I’m getting old, so landing wrong scares me. The roundoff was on, the handspring was long and strong, that’s when I committed to it. I went up, put my arms to the side (I don’t think I remembered to set) and pulled and looked for the ground. It wasn’t pretty, but I did it. Landed it.
You can’t image the adrenalin that was flowing through my blood at that point. I started hugging Chaz every two seconds until she finally said something. Honestly, I don’t remember too much, it was just great to throw it again. I really love that trick, and it makes me feel young again.
Then we got to practicing. All in all it was a good practice, we improved a lot and I think came together more as a team. However, there were a couple of injuries, including some people landing on my head that made me quite dizzy for a while.
I spent the rest of the day up at Stockton for a Jamz region competition. It was interesting to see where so many teams were in their routines. Some of the routines were really amazing. I’m consistently impressed with All Star Elite‘s choreography. They have a lot of people on the floor, but they do some very interesting stunts. I remember seeing them at GSSA and being impressed with them there as well.
Got to see Rebels Elite compete for the first time. They are a strong program, and I’m surprised at how many teams they have competing given the size of their facility.
All and all a stacked weekend of cheerleading. Good fun for all.