We are waiting to get on the practice mats;I hear music and I turn the corner and see our biggest competition of the day is warming up their stunts.I don’t think I’ve ever seen at team our age hit those stunts as well as they did. They only have one good flyer, but their stunts are clean and sharp. My coach blocks my view.
“Stop watching! Its going to make you more nervous!” she says.I can’t help it though, I want to see what we are up against. I’m the tallest on the team so I could easily see them.
“Pewaukee!” a man screams.
“Alright opening stunts,” our captains say
I take my stunt group to the corner mat and begin our show and go. It hits; next is the “press extension quipee”. That hits too. Right about now I’m feeling pretty confident. Our stunts aren’t as good as the other teams, but all of our flyers are tight and sharp. Lucky for us they only have one flyer like that. We finish our stunts and hit the full mats.
“Nine mats? We’ve never had nine mats!?” I say.
“Hit it,” Taylor, our high school coach, screams. Our music starts playing. We hit our stunts, all of them, except our ending stunts bobbles.We walk through the hallway, the nerves start to set in. This is it; the one day that we spent months and hours working on our routine. Three or four girls on my team are huddled together talking about their stunt group, two girls are crying into each other arms, and me and my friend are trying not to hyperventilate.
“And here are your Pewaukee Pirates!!” The man says.
“Hands in,” the team captains say “One. Two. Three. LETS GO!!”
We run on the mats and sparkle. “Go Pewaukee! Let’s go Pirates!!” Our music starts, my heart sinks as we missed our “show and go” by about half a count. We run to the next stunt and they are perfectly on time, tumbling pass is great! We’ve lined up perfectly, Halftime stunt is good, then comes our cheer, we sound the best we have ever sounded, only three of our four stunts go up on time, the teams three show and go’s are all off they come up in a ripple.
The dance was spot on; everyone hit! And then our ending stunt comes. This is what we’ve spent hours upon hours working on. It all happens so slowly. My heart jumps! I can’t believe we just did what we did. I know we’ve made mistakes, and I know the other teams did too, but all I can worry about is our ending score. Our win or loss is in the hands of the judges.
After we are off the mats, I can’t help but cry. I pull Olivia in for a hug and start crying into her shoulder. Our couches tell us we did good and how proud of us they were.
“Was that our best?” I ask one of our high school coaches.
“You guys were great, but last night for the parents, that was your best. That was definitely close though,” She was right: we performed for our parents and that was our best. During the awards we stood up for every first place winner. Then came our category and they called third. Not us. Second it was us. My heart sank becasue we wanted first so bad and worked so hard to get there. We stood up with smiles on our faces though. I congratulated every girl on the winning team and told them they were amazing.
Even though we didn’t win the competition, I still think we won. Because, we worked hard and we became a family, even with all the drama. I made close friends and worked hard. My team isn’t just my team; they’re my family.
