History of Erin Boat

History of Erin Boat
The Unnecessary Backstory (the beginning)

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Tuesday, September 14, 2010

It's a long story, but if you don't want to read it, there's a tl;dr version on the bottom. Just scroll.

I started cheerleading when I was 8, for a local rec-football team. I loved it, but it was only a few months a year. Outside of cheer season, I'd constantly be talking about it, practicing old cheers, and trying to talk the neighbor kids into practicing stunting with me (which looking back on, I'm glad they refused, since they had no idea what they were doing and we were all kids with no supervision)

When I was 11, an All-Star team (competitive team, for those who don't know anthing about cheerleading) opened up nearby, and I joined it. It was 3 practices a week, year round. It became my everything (second only to my love of writing) We were good. Not great, but good. We had two teams, a junior and a senior team. I was on the Junior team. Our seniors won first place at their first competition. The first competition any of our teams had. They continued doing just as well at all the regional competitions, but always came in last at Nationals. That was okay, we figured. That's still better than a lot of other teams in the country. Our junior team wasn't as great, but we did well enough. We made it to Nationals, finally, in our third year, and everything fell apart. One girl called us just before our flight and said she changed her mind about coming. Another girl, our best tumbler, broke her wrist in the pool at the hotel. A third girl (and her mother) got food poisoning and couldn't compete because she couldn't stop puking. We had to re-arrange our routine, we all messed up at least once, and we came in last. That's fine. Our performance was really terrible.

None of us knew, at the time, that it would be our last competition. A month or so later, our coach sat us all down at the end of practice. She had lost the lease on our gym. She was having a hard time finding us a new practice space, because we needed it three times a week. She asked what we wanted to do. We wanted to stay together, even if that meant only one practice a week. We'd just practice more at home.

We tried. Our coach couldn't handle it.  Our team dissolved. There were no other All-Star teams in the area. I was starting high school, but my school didn't have a team. I had no other options. Cheerleading was over for me.

It's 6 years later, and I still miss the sport more than anything. I'm in college now, but there's no way I can cheer. For one, my school doesn't have cheerleaders, and more importantly, I'm out of practice, and out of shape. I doubt I can even do a decent cartwheel right now.

But since I'm in college, I just moved. And the town I'm in has an All-Star gym. I'm tempted to send them an email, saying..... I don't even know what. I can't cheer, I'm not certified to coach, I've never choreographed anything half-way decent, and I can't even answer phones for them, because talking on the phone sends me into a crazy anxiety attack in which I'm likely to throw up or pass out. And their team is internationally ranked. Mine was only barely nationally anything, and I was one of the least-skillful girls on the team. But I want, maybe need, to get back into my sport. I'd happily vacuum their spring floors (THEY HAVE 2! TWO COMPETITION SIZED SPRING FLOORS! HOW FREAKING AWESOME IS THAT!? ) for free. But how do I say that without seeming like a desperate wanna-be, or a total creeper?

But on the other hand, it would break my heart if they turned me away. I hurt enough for Cheerleading. I don't want to hurt more.

Irrelevant, but  we've set the date for our wedding. May 31, 2012.

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