I gnce at the girls practicing some dance moves, and honestly, there’s not a lot of difference between everyone. All cute, all in shape, and all absolutely focused. Sure, they have different builds, heights, and things like that, but the basics are the same for all of us.
After that, they began working with me on my dismounts. Fortunately, Sophia and Olivia both have experience, and that’s probably the main reason I don’t have a broken tailbone. My bet is the only reason they had an issue is a difference in the way they had been taught. As long as I kept my body in the proper stance, they were able to get me up and down safely.
Just as I thought we were finally getting it, I broke stance again as Coach Adams made her way over. “Rei, come on! You’ve got to maintain position unless you like hitting the ground.”
Needless to say, I feel like a total idiot again.
I think Olivia and Sophia realized that her acidic comments are taking a toll on me. When Coach Adams, who I begin to think of as Coach Satan, has gone to jump all over the next group, they both reassure me that I’m doing really well for someone who has never performed lifts before. That brings a smile back to my face and makes me want to work a little harder so that the three of us won’t look totally inept.
Two hours ter, I’m tired, and my ankles, butt, and everything else are far sorer than I ever imagined possible. Olivia and Sophia look just as tired. Of course, they’re the ones doing all of the hard work. I’m just the one getting dropped.
As we walk to the next thing, Olivia and Sophia are talking with Mia and Natalya. They all mentioned how sore they are, but Natalya looks around and quietly says, “Hey, at least you had Rei. She doesn’t weigh much at all; we had to toss Amanda. She’s not fat, but she probably outweighs Rei by a good 15 to 20 pounds.”
They all giggle about that as we enter an auditorium. We spend the next hour listening to a motivational speaker and a lecture on public speaking. Then we move on to practice exercises. I have no idea how, but that time just seems to fly by at warp speed. The speaker and lecturer are very good at what they do.
When we finish up with the presentation, each squad is brought up to the stage and told to do one of the cheers we were given. No practice, no nothing. The judges all discuss the squads for a few minutes, and I notice Coach Adams pointing at me after our performance, which makes me sigh and grimace. I just know that she’s saying something bad about me again.
After lunch, we have an hour’s break. Then we head out to the quad to work on cheers. Ava brings out several bottles of sunscreen that she passes around to all of us. She also makes sure that we all have full water bottles before we begin since it’s a hot day. After we sther each other with sunscreen, we work hard enough to make sure that we empty our water bottles.
We first spend some time practicing the cheers that came in our packets. After that, Ava focuses on teaching us some cheers that she thought could be good for the competition on Saturday. Olivia and Sophia seem to have some ideas of their own that they add to hers. Before I know it, we have like fifteen cheers that we have to memorize.
The next morning, Emma again prods Kelly and me awake. “Come on, you two. We don’t want to be te.”
If you can’t guess, neither Kelly nor I are morning people. After a quick shower, throwing on fresh clothes, and putting up our hair, we head to breakfast.
The counselors put on an even better show today. The most impressive things they did we probably won’t be doing until college. The guys they brought in were able to throw Ava a huge distance into the air. As they did that, I began wondering what it would be like to be thrown that high. I imagine they could throw me even higher. After all, I’m much smaller than Ava.
We perform stunts again, although the first half is simply reviewing everything that we had done the day before. We’re actually all doing really well in our squad, and I’m doing much better than I did yesterday. The next thing we work on is synchronizing our work with another trio. That’s much harder than you might think it is.
We were also given a lot of individual help on jumping. Thankfully, this was one area that Ava has already been helping me out with a lot. Olivia’s even impressed with how well I’m doing with them. Coach Adams watches me for a little while, then simply walks away to another group. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I have no idea.
After that is more motivational training and public speaking. Then a presentation on different events that you could have at school. They discuss what you can do during spirit week and different themes you can use. It’s actually pretty interesting and very informative. Even better, it isn’t just them lecturing us. There’s plenty of interaction between us and the speaker.
After lunch, we do more work on our cheers. When Ava pronounces the phrases ‘words good’ and ‘chanting acceptable,’ she said it’s time to begin adding some stuff to them. Of course, that means the stunts we have been working on are added to those cheers. Yay! Not!
The routines for each cheer aren’t as complicated as the dance routines we’ve been working on. Of course, they aren’t exactly easy either. We drill all of that non-stop, working especially hard on three of the cheers that Ava believes will be the best ones to use in the competition. Of the three, Ava says we’ll pick the best one and focus on it for the competition, but she wants us to have choices up until that point.
In the st half hour of our session, Coach Adams comes by and doesn’t say anything to me. Personally, I believe she thinks I’m a lost cause. I’m almost floored when I think I see her smile at me for a second. It must have been my imagination because, just a few moments ter, she jumps all over me again.
Later that afternoon, we have to work on our dance routine again. We arrive at the cssroom, and of course, I have butterflies attempting to break the sound barrier in my stomach. Coach Adams chewed me up one side and down the other yesterday, so Ava offered to help me practice after we were released yesterday.
We begin rehearsal by going through the routine at half-speed, move by move. I hit every mark at all of the right times. ‘So far, so good,’ I think to myself. From there, we speed things up another notch. I still hit everything when I’m supposed to.
Eventually, after speeding it up several more times, Coach Adams said, “Okay, dies. What do you say we try it with the music this time?”
I’m amazed to find that the st time we ran through it, we’d been going much faster than the music called for. I concentrate so much on counting the steps that I barely register the fact that I’m in the final pose and we’ve finished the routine.
“Not too bad, dies…” Then she looks dead at me as she says, “Most of you, that is.”
Good Lord! Is she never satisfied?! Needless to say, we’re soon repeating the dance again and again.
Finally, after about the tenth run-through of the routine, she yells at me, “Rei, smile. You’re supposed to show the audience that you’re enjoying yourself. You’ve got the moves down, but that doesn’t mean a thing if you don’t smile and make people think you’re having fun.”
Speaking of smiling. Would it kill her to smile once in a while?
So, in addition to everything else, I have to remember to smile. I swear, remembering to smile takes far more concentration than the rest of it. Remind me why I wanted to be a cheerleader again…
When we get through it, she has us all sit down as she paces back and forth in front of us. “Ladies, for the most part, I’m impressed with how quickly you’ve picked this up. Of the groups here, I gave your squad the hardest routine to learn. You dies are far ahead of the others from what I’ve seen.” She pauses and actually smiles at us. She smiles! “I think you’re going to do very well the day after tomorrow at the competition.”
“Don’t believe that I’m going to go easy on you, though! There’s still plenty of work you can do to improve! Some of you aren’t as crisp with your movements as you should be. Ava also suggested we try a couple of other things to make your routine even more interesting. We’ll try them out tomorrow. For now, I hope you all enjoy the remainder of your evening.”
As we all stand up, she pulls me aside. “Rei, did you practice st night?”
“Yes, Coach. For about 90 minutes during our free time,” I reply.
“Good girl. It shows. I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen another person work quite as hard as you do to get things right. Just make sure that you have fun while you’re at it too, alright?"
“Yes, Ma’am,” I reply with probably the biggest smile since I got here. I gnce at Emma and Kelly beside me to see them smiling too. Coach actually complimented me! OMG! Squeal! Maybe she isn’t Satan incarnate as I thought.
“Emma, you’re also doing quite well. With a little more experience, I see you being the captain of your squad in middle school.”
“Thanks. That’s what I’m shooting for.”
“Kelly, the amount of work you’ve put in definitely shows. Keep it up.”
Kelly smiles. “I will.”
“You three are almost inseparable, aren’t you?”
We giggle as we look at each other. “They call us the three Mouseketeers at school,” Emma tells her.
She ughs for a few moments. “I can see you being called that. Keep it up, Rei, you’ve improved a lot since yesterday. Well, off you go, then.”
When we get outside, I skip a step, hop into the air, and pump my fist as I call out, “Yes!”
Kelly and Emma giggle at me, which only makes my smile that much brighter.
When we get to our dorm, we sit down on our beds to rest, and Kelly says, “We seriously need to talk to the coach about adding some of this into our routines at school.”
I nod. “I think it’d make things a lot more fun for people, but you know what the coach said.”
Emma shrugs. “True, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t try to change her mind. I’m sure we have a chance if all of us work together.”
“We can try, but how about we take a shower first? Dunno about you two, but I’m soaked,” I state.
I get into the shower and let the hot water run down my body to rinse away all of the sweat and ease some of the soreness away. I can’t believe how sore I am, and it’s only been a few days. Heck, I thought I was in decent shape, and I am, compared to the average girl. If nothing else, this has shown me that the three of us are going to have to work much harder if we want to be the best and continue cheerleading on into college. And, yes, I do want to cheerlead in college. At first, I might have been reluctant about being a cheerleader, but it’s something that I’ve really come to enjoy, and the popurity is simply a bonus added to that.
I walk out of the bathroom with just a towel wrapped around me and sit down at the desk I cimed to blow dry and brush my hair. After dinner, we’re scheduled to have a pool party with everyone, so once I finish with my hair, I braid it and then get out the bikini I brought with me along with a pair of shorts and a halter top.
It doesn’t take too long for Kelly and Emma to finish showering and getting ready. Believe me, it’s rather nice that we get to rex tonight since we’ve been working so hard. At dinner, we all get our trays and sit down at our table with the other girls on our squad.
Of course, we chat as we slowly eat. At one point, we’re talking about trips we’ve taken. Then the conversation moves on to boyfriends.
After dinner, we make our way to the campus pool for the massive party with all of the squads. There are a lot of games, especially water volleyball, with the squads pying as teams to take first pce. Unfortunately, our squad only gets 4th pce, but it’s still a lot of fun. Other than that, we mostly spend our time talking to and getting to know other girls and just pying in the pool with music loudly pying in the background.
A few hours ter, we’re sent back to the dorms to rex. The three of us quickly take another shower to get rid of the chlorinated water in our hair and then donned our nightgowns. Our group activity tonight is all of us getting together in the lounge to paint each other’s nails. It’s a rather loud activity with many giggles, lots of chatting, and generally just us girls being girls.
We work on each other’s nails for a good hour before Ava shushes us and then tells a story from her cheerleading career. It’s a cute story that makes all of us smile, even the more standoffish girls, before we all head to bed.
