All throughout my high school career, I was part of my school’s competitive cheerleading team. Like most athletes, I had a love-hate relationship with my sport- and yes, it is a sport. We fell, cried, whined, and persevered together for months, until we knew every cheer by heart and until we could act out all the counts in our sleep. Now that I am no longer a cheerleader, I have been feeling some post-cheerleading blues. If you are on the same boat, you might be feeling these symptoms:
1. When you work out, you think you’re training for something.
So you’re at the gym, and you go to stretch out. You have your headphones in and you automatically stretch to the same sequence that your team did before practice. You have determination in your eyes and you’re getting ready to conquer the routine- you mean, the elliptical.
2. You casually make a split in the middle of the gym.
While doing your stretch sequence, you think it’s perfectly normal to drop a split in the middle of the gym. No big deal.
3. You start talking like a grandma.
“Back in my day, I use to do a back handspring back tuck. Now my body just can’t perform like it use to,” you tell your friends who clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.
4. You miss being a part of a team.
You’re at the gym or dining hall and you see a herd of girls in their athletic uniform. You miss having a group of girls that you could bond with, whether it be through blood, sweat and tears on the matt or jokes, parties, and sleepovers outside of it.
5. You miss competing.
You look back at pictures and videos from cheer competitions and you wish you could experience it all over again- the team huddles before getting on the mat, the daunting silence before the music starts, the calculated yet fluid execution of the routine, and the interlocking of each other’s hands as you wait the score results. Oddly enough, you even miss carpooling to and from competition.
Even though I complained about practice, mandatory games, competitions and even my coach (Love ya Miss L!), I am glad to have experienced it all. Through cheerleading, I met really great girls, collected wonderful memories and learned to always get back up after I fall. No wonder I have the post-cheerleading blues.
Image Sources: Hercampus.com, Blogspot.com, Chelsea Chang, Juviand Rivera