OMG. Can you believe it has been over FOUR MONTHS since I last posted? Life has just gotten in the way of writing on my blog. Some good news first: I got my braces off! This entry is actually not that interesting. I wrote it a looong time ago and should have posted it a looong time ago. Here you go: Cheerleading & Football - the good, the bad, and the ugly, otherwise known as pep rally, injuries, and practice.

"Cheerleading has dramatically improved. And now it's over (for me, at least… darn our football team. More on that later). Before I get to the good part, let me tell you about the not-so-great parts of cheerleading this year, namely, the Homecoming pep rally. Things were really glitchy that week and we practiced so hard for that by the time Friday came around, we were sick of pep rally. Let's see if I can relive that week.

Our routine went something like this: music starts, stunting, dance, music stops, transition chant, cheer with stunts, music starts, stunting, and end with a hip hop dance. It should have been simple, but it needed so much work. We put the routine together in less than a week (except for the dances; we learned those before Homecoming week). Doing the whole routine on such short notice just made it harder, especially since we were very tired towards the end of the week.

The biggest problem was that stunts were not hitting, mainly because the coaches had switched the stunt groups around. Because they didn't want people's feelings to get hurt by being left out of the stunts, they tried to include everyone, even when certain people weren't ready to do certain stunts. I don't know about you, but I prefer safety over happiness, especially when I'm the one being tossed around in the air.

I have never hit the ground while flying as much as I did that week. Even when I was first learning how to fly, if I started to fall, people would catch me. But during that week, if a stunt didn't go up/hit, instead of being caught, I would smack the ground most of the time. This was due to inadequate spotting abilities. I repeat, you are NEVER supposed to let the flyer hit the ground. If we were still at cheer camp, we probably would have had to do over 100 pushups a day as punishment.

Inventory of my body at the end of that week: countless bruises, my back hurt, my left calf/lower leg (tendon in my ankle?) hurt, my left wrist hurt, my shoulders and right forearm were sore, and my abs and torso hurt. This is all from stunting/being dropped.

The actual pep rally was worth all the trouble that was put into it. First things first. Preparing for the pep rally included wearing these ugly bow things, sticking tattoos/glitter on our faces, and curling our hair. I didn't wear glitter but thank goodness that tattoo came off easily because if it hadn't, I'd freak out. The coaches had ordered new hair bows for us. Actually, they're not bows. They're BARRETTES. Ugly barrettes that could poke someone's eyes out. Honestly!

Pep rally: We started out by teaching the crowd the words to a chant and we had several teachers do the motions with us. Then we did a competition between the classes to see who was loudest. Obviously, the seniors won, even though the sophomores (go sophomores!) were loudest. We threw little plastic footballs at the seniors and then we started our routine.

We still had practice after school where we did the cheers that we were going to do at the game, including a new welcome/good luck cheer for the guest school. Stunt-wise, my original stunt group (I love them so much) enjoyed a cheerful reunion after being separated/scrambled up during the pep rally routine. We practiced our leap-frog stunt that we put it in the welcome cheer, reverse load-in, and lib. I also got a chair with the guy on our squad. Go us! The next day, we had to be at school at 7:30 AM to decorate the field, practice, and march in the Homecoming parade. The game didn't start until 1 PM-ish but we won 42-12. Yay!

Seriously, is this the same squad that couldn't even cheer in rhythm way back in June? Since school started, we have practiced every day so we could perform three cheers for the games on Friday with different stunts every week. It was intense. Eventually, we got so great, we could cut practices down to about two per week. I think we've done really well since the pep rally and I'm very proud of the fall squad. Too bad cheerleading is over for me this year; I won't be doing winter season.

Okay, I've talked about cheerleading. Now for our football team. For the past two years, our varsity football team has been the league champion. They were undefeated in 2005 and only lost two games in 2006. This year they were UNDEFEATED again (regular season). 10-0. Amazing. We even won our first playoff game. Now can someone tell me why we lost our second playoff game against a team that we previously beat??? We lost 0-13. It's the first time we have not scored a single touchdown in three years. I'm disappointed, but I'm still proud of our football team. It's easy to cheer for a winning team, especially undefeated league champions."

So did you enjoy my little rant about cheerleading? I know this is a sad excuse for a post, but I figured that since it's a new year, I should put something up. More entries to come (I have SO MUCH to say and brag about! ).