Have you ever taken a chance and applied for a job that you were in no way qualified for but really wanted? Well, I did just that and, man, do I have a story to tell.
It was a chilly morning in early December when I made my way to Toronto to audition for the Toronto Blue Jays’ J Force team. For those of you who don’t know, the J Force team is essentially the dance/cheer team for the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team. I know many of you may be wondering why the heck I decided to audition for a dance/cheer team, and it is one hundred percent because I wanted to. I wanted to step outside my comfort zone and do something new, so I did.
Before I begin telling you about my experience auditioning for the J Force, I would like to start by saying the last few months of 2019 have been absolute hell. Everything in my life has been flipped: I’ve felt lost and without a purpose. When I applied on a whim for the J Force, I never thought I would ever be invited to audition for the team, let alone go! I also never thought I would discover a love for dance, nor a love for cheer, but I did.
When I first got to the audition, I received a number to pin to my shirt. I was number 67, which goes to show just how many women were there. I haven’t pinned a number to my shirt since grade 7, when I ran a 5k, so that was fun. We then went to the “holding area” where we waited for further instructions. This is where I started to feel extremely out of place. Everyone was doing really intense stretches and warmups and all I did was take off my jeans to reveal my shorts. They were Under Armour (not a sponsored post but I would highly recommend the brand).
As we were brought down to where the field would be during the season, I was really nervous and felt terribly overwhelmed. I also felt nauseous and had a splitting headache, but more on that later. The ladies auditioning were introduced to the panel that would be making cuts halfway through the day.
After the brief introduction, it was time to learn the dances. There were two we needed to learn, and we really needed to learn them, because those would be the dances we performed in front of the panel as the deciding factor in whether we moved on. At this point, you must be wondering something along the lines of “Well, did you make it?” and I did not.
That being said, I wasn’t cut either. It wasn’t my proudest moment but, because of my nausea and headache, I felt it was best to leave. Did I want to leave? No, but I felt like it was the best option for me at the time. I had to face the fact that I would rather be known as the girl who tried and left than the girl who vomited all over herself, or worse, the girl who never tried at all. I may not be the best dancer, but I am super pleased that I went out and tried, and you can bet I will be out there again next year, dancing and sweating and smiling up a storm!