High School Sports; you can’t please everyone

Wow. I never knew that coaching cheer could be this fun or this easy. I’m scared. I’m waiting for the shoe to drop. Maybe it won’t, maybe this is the way it’s supposed to be. Maybe God has granted me this season’s new squad because He feels like I paid my dues last season.

The mom of one candidate who didn’t make it back on now “hates” me and her daughter is never allowed to go out for cheer again. Nor is she allowed to become mascot ( I BEGGED her to, but she’s on Drill squad and thought that she’d be gross and sweaty when it was time to perform with Drill, and I suppose she’s right.)

It makes me sad. I really love that kid and was rooting for her to make it back on, but she really needs to work on her grades anyway.
I appreciated this kid so much. Not just because of her awesome flips and tumbling, but because she was our glue. Our stabalizing element. She’s the one who ran after people who stormed off and wanted to quit. She’s the one person of the twelve who never went negative, who never felt sorry for herself and never complained. Even when she lost her Grandpa. She’s steady and she leads both by directing people and by example. And even though she’s a natural born flyer, she didn’t hog the glory but became an outstanding base too.

Be that all as it may, our candidates had to have teacher reccomendation forms and then they had to perform in front of a panel of six judges. I also figured student’s grade point averages into a points total.

Another mom chewed me out on the phone the other day for nearly 40 minutes. Her daughter and decided not to come back out (maybe she sized up the competition and saw the writing on the wall) she asked if she could help with JrHi cheer on the days she doesn’t have Weight Lifting- who knows, maybe she could improve and tryout again next season. She’s only a Freshman so she’ll have six more opportunities- besides many of this season’s cheerleaders plan on playing volleyball rather than cheering next Fall. On top of that, she had surgery to have her wisdom teeth out just before tryouts and had some bad reactions to her pain-killers, so she was really in no condition to tryout even if she had wanted to.

Now her mom is angry with me for not rescheduling tryouts. The girl was still a mess a week after tryouts. Our first game is Dec 3, I wish I could have had tryouts a month earlier- we’re going to be pushing it to be ready as it is.

I like this kid too. She told me that coming out for cheerleading was a life-altering decision that she made. I hope she still feels like that’s true. No one would have ever thought that she would come out for cheer, they assume that she’s brooding and sardonic and critical of perky people. And that’s some of what drove her. She wanted to prove her critics wrong. While I still think she’s too hard on herself, she made it. By the last game, she knew most of the chants and kept up, she even went up as a flyer in a half-extension mount.

Now, her mom’s scared to death that her kid is going to be up to no good every Friday night and she banked on her getting back on squad when she registered for a class every Friday.

Last week this girl was in tears in my room because her mom was so angry at her for not being a cheerleader anymore. Do you know how awkward it is to want to honor and respect the parent, but have their child come to you for comfort or solice because their relationship with their parent is so strained? Yikes. All I could do was try to reassure her that everybody goes through this kind of thing when they separate from their parents’ orbit durring adolescence.

But back to THIS season’s squad. Holy Cow! They learn so fast. They have so much energy and enthusiasm. They’re so sharp. They’re so coachable and cooperative. They get along with each other and there’s no DRAMA! No crying, no kussing, no tantrums. They want to workout durring conditioning. They don’t cut corners, they don’t whine.

We have two Freshmen, two Sophomores and two Juniors. The of the six are also on Drill Squad, so they have experience with “cheerleadery things” like jumps and 8-counts. Wow. Thank you Jesus!

But, kids are kids and parents are parents, so I’m sure that there will eventually be some drama. The other night in practice one of them challenged me because they didn’t want to have to take out their navel ring. Good grief. There’s always something.