I LOVE coaching cheerleading! I love the relationships that you make with the girls, the feeling you get when they hit a stunt that you worked so hard to teach them, watching them perform a routine you helped put together. Basically it's a very fulfilling, but busy hobby. Just to give you an idea of exactly how busy it can be, especially during competition season, here's a summary of my day Saturday (Day 510).
We knew from the beginning of the day that it was gonna be a long one. Our girls basketball team had a district game at 7pm at the same school that our competition was at in Pocatello. But there wasn't going to be enough time in between our competition and the game to go back to Rexburg, so we would be leaving the high school at 5am, compete with 4 different routines, hang out for a few hours and then cheer at a basketball game, arriving home around 10pm. Can you say longest day ever?
Sleeping on the bus wasn't just due to boredom, it was done out of necessity. Quietest bus ride with cheerleaders ever! When we got to Pocatello it was still dark outside... thank goodness it was freezing. Definitely helped to wake us all up a bit. We got all registered and then started scoping out our competition. Probably not the healthiest thing to do, but you can't help it. This is Madison's first year competing 5A. This means that the schools we are now competing against are bigger, which means they are more talented and harder to compete against. Last year Madison was the 4A state champs. With a title like that comes a lot of pressure, especially as a coach. I am blessed to be coaching with probably one of the most talented and easy to work with coaches on the planet! She makes coaching a whole lot easier. Our competition for this particular weekend was at Highland High School. The home to last years, and the year before, and several before that, 5A state cheerleading champions. There was a lot of pressure riding on this competition. It was our first time competing against them and we wanted to make sure that we gave them a run for their money.
We compete 4 different routines. This is completely different from Utah where we just competed with 1 routine. These girls in Rexburg have to work so much harder in order to perfect and learn these routines. It's harder as a coach also because we create our own routines instead of hiring someone else to do it for us. It keeps us on our toes.
We started the day off with our Show routine. This routine is 2 1/2 minutes long and consists of 1 1/2 minutes of music, 1 minute cheer, tumbling, stunting, and dancing. It's exhausting!!!
Our next routine was our Sideline. This is a 1 minute long cheer that incorporates different props and encourages the crowd to yell along. This was our most iffy routine of the weekend, due to the fact that we had just learned it 5 days prior. Normally squads learn their routines at the end of the summer, but Kelli and I are both new Mom's (our baby girls are exactly 6 months apart) and we are adjusting so it threw us off our game a bit. But for only knowing this for 5 days, they performed pretty decently.
Next was Pom. This is a 1 minute long routine done with poms. Our routine is very active and quite tiring! But it's a pretty fun routine.
The last routine was our Stunt. It's a 1 minute long stunting routine which only includes 5 girls. But these girls came up with the routine all by themselves and they rocked the socks off it!
This is what happens when you leave your camera with the stunt group for a quick bathroom break...
There was also a jump off at this particular competition, and while other schools entering 3-7 girls, we only entered one and turns out she won!!!! She was AMAZING! A jump off consists of doing different jump sequences for judges and them narrowing down the contestants until you have a winner. There were 24 schools at this competition and probably about 50 girls in the jump off. We could not be more proud of our winner!!!
After the jump off came the awards. As a coach, it may be the most nerve wracking thing of all! You never know what the judges are going to say or how it's all going to play out. The first award was for Show. This was the one that we anticipated the most, because it was the one we needed to win! And when it came down to it. We beat the previous 5A champs by 6 points!!! It was the best feeling and such an amazing moment in my coaching career! Sideline we placed second, which we anticipated Pom, we tied for 1st but due to an accidental stepping off the mat we got a 1 point deduction so we got 2nd. And for Stunt we won 1st, beating the other teams by 9 points!!! I have only competed for USA and never at state level, but according to our scores, if this would have been the state competition, we would have won! Best feeling in the world!
Then since we had to wait around for a few hours, we crashed over at Kelli's sister's house. And when I say crashed, I mean crashed! Look at this cute sign she had to welcome us.
The game that night was exhausting! We were all so tired, but we had a blast and made the most of it!!!!
Don't judge Kelli and I!!! This was like 14 hours in to our crazy long day! We were tired and we missed our babies!!!
Pulling stunts like this after a long day??? No problem!
And don't worry... You will see videos soon.... I just don't have them right now.... Sad huh?
