How many times have people asked why you’re not skipping practice to study? Or how cheering in your junior and senior year is going to help you with college or getting a job? Turns out there’s a lot more cheerleaders learn on the mat than how to throw other cheerleaders around and flip our bodies over.
Teamwork Makes My Dream Work
Yes, cheer is a team sport, but it’s also an individual sport. You need to bring your best skills to the mat to make sure your whole team gets the execution score they need, as well as doing your job while stunting. It’s the ultimate accountability because you need to know how to your job for the betterment of the team, all while knowing that your weaknesses affect everyone. This means spending time to be the best individual you, so you can be the best collective team. And it goes without saying that strong teams are made up of individuals with a strong sense of self-accountability. Take this mentality into the workplace and you’re an invaluable team player who can not only excel at your own work but can create an environment where everyone wants to excel.
Fear of Failure
We’re all afraid to fail, it can be scary and embarrassing! We’ve grown up in a world where people post their best lives on social media and cancel anyone who makes the smallest mistake. But in real life, failure is part of growth, and cheerleaders know how to weather failure better than most. It can take weeks or months, sometimes even years, to gain new tumbling skills. Put four people together to master a stunt, or a team of 20 to perfect a pyramid under the bright lights and you’ll see falls all over the place. But keep watching and you’ll see how cheerleaders mat talk each other through, eliminating the fear of failure in their teammates and try one more time, or hit that much harder. The energy we bring to each other means the fear of failure becomes something we come together to defeat!
Werrrrrk
Allstar cheer, HS cheer, track, band, social life, homework… oh yeah, AND school. How do you make it all happen? Organization, work ethic, and excellent time management skills. Talk to any HS cheerleader and they can show you where they add in extra study hours while traveling for competitions, or how they make sure laundry is done on Wednesdays so they have all their uniforms for gamedays and competition clean and ready. Learning these skills in HS make it that much easier for cheerleaders to transition into the hectic world of college and adult life.
The Long Game
You don’t win the Summit overnight, or make a Worlds team with a walkover. It takes the time it’s going to take to perfect your skills and gain new ones, to level up through the years and battle with heartbreak, injuries, failure… And the worst part? You can’t order this kind of reward online for same-day delivery when it all gets too hard. The only way to get there is to enjoy each day as it comes and reflect on how far you are from where you started. Appreciate the wins along the way… it could be your stunt group hitting 0 at every competition, gaining a new tumbling skill, improving jumps or flexibility, being the teammate that people rely on for mat talk. Cheerleaders are good at playing the long game, and there’s always someone out there working just as hard as you who wants it just as much.
