Blog One

I never thought that doing my best work would involve me losing.  However, that is exactly what happened.  My senior year of high school, I was the captain of my competition cheerleading squad.  We had all sorts of problems from the very start.  Our choreographers were completely unorganized, our counts were ridiculous and our stunt sections were impossible.  Knowing all of this, it was hard to keep everyone's attitudes positive; especially at six in the morning.  However, that was my job as captain and I made sure to do my best to do everything in my power to keep smiles on these girls' faces who were practicing before the sun had risen. 

I was completely out of ideas as to how to boost the attitudes and abilities of my squad.  I brought food, hosted team bonding activities and made more little crafts than I could ever imagine.  Nothing seemed to work.  Attitudes continued to degenerate as well as the good attitudes and good health of my squad.       

Our first competition came all too soon.  We had been battling the flu, strep throat, bad attitudes and missing practices for months now.  Our counts were not dead on, our stunts were not sticking and to top it off, one of our girls had fallen really ill and was not physically able to come to the meet.  We all knew we were not ready and the pressure started to wear on us.

As you can imagine, as we stepped onto the big blue mat at the Westdale Mall Cheerleading Competition, everything fell apart.  Our stunts did not stick, our counts were completely off and frankly, it was the most embarassing three minutes of my life.  Watching the crowd's faces as I knew what had to be going on behind me was devestating.  Having to smile through it was even more devestating.  Getting off the mat and seeing the disappointment and embarassment on the my teammates' faces was terrible.  Seeing my fellow seniors who had been working for this for so long just like me was heart-breaking.  All I could do was keep myself from crying when everyone else was and try to be the best leader I could be. Reflecting on it now, I know this was one of the times in my life where I was at my very best.  I know that that meant so much to me at the time and it was not easy but I did what I had to do.