She stands there alone.
Sure, there are others in the room, some of them her best friends. But what she is about to do is totally up to her now.
She has trained. She knows how to do what’s next. She’s done it a hundred times before.
But her heart starts to race anyway. Her stomach flips even as she prepares herself by calmly thinking about all the confidence in her skill she needs to accomplish this. She stands tall, reaching for the sky and takes a deep breath. She’s ready. She begins to let herself fall backwards, reaching for a chair that’s never there. At the very last second she swings her arms straight up and back, she followers her hands with her eyes, her head straight up and back as well. A hush falls over the room as she pushes off the floor with everything she’s got, knowing that the only thing between success and failure is her hands landing on the floor behind her in time. Then she feels it. The split second of intense pressure as 300 times her own weight is driven into her wrists. She flips her body over, her feet landing safely on the mat behind her and she springs up with the look of triumph written all over her face.
Yes! She can still do a back handspring and she is ready for her collegiate tryouts! Her high school season ended in March so it’s been a while since she’s thrown a back handspring. She had to be sure. Dakota needed her confidence back before she headed off to CCSU for cheerleading tryouts that weekend and she got what she came for.
No, Dakota’s sport isn’t just pom-poms and skirts. It is a lot of really long practices filled with bumps and bruises trying to get some pretty extreme things right. It takes a lot of dedication and motivation swirled together to make the team shine at MHS football games every Friday night in the fall and sometimes twice a week during basketball season cheering for both boys and girls basketball teams. Add to that long practices preparing for their own competitions in the spring where they face some of the toughest teams in our area. And most of what she and her teammates do is extremely dangerous. That back handspring is just one example. Dakota’s also an amazing backspot for flyers who twist as they’re coming down out of a stunt. Her flyers land safely in the arms of the athletes who moments ago held them in the air on one leg. Or how about those breathtaking basket tosses? Pretty cool, yes? Also very dangerous if done incorrectly or without the proper training.
Although she thanks Coach Ross for the training and unending belief in her ability to get her back handspring, it’s really Dakota out there on the mat accomplishing her own dreams. She was the one who put in all those hours training. She was the one who overcame monstrous fears and believed in herself when it counted. And in the end, she’s the one with the white ribbon in her hair making the CCSU team.
That’s right! Because of her ability to throw that back handspring, one of CCSU requirements, Dakota made the team and MHS has yet another college-bound cheerleader. We couldn’t be more proud! Collegiate cheerleading isn’t technically considered a sport, so Dakota will not receive a scholarship for school for her efforts and dedication to her… well, we still call it her “sport”. She does what she does because she loves it. When asked why she chose cheerleading all those years ago, knowing she could participate in any sport she wanted to, she said she picked cheerleading because a lot of people think it’s silly and she loves proving them wrong.
Her first CCSU home game will be September 14th and we can’t wait! As Dakota trades in her red and white for the blue and white of her new team, the Blue Devils, she’d love to see you there at the CCSU games to cheer her on!
