Time to Step it Up

Since I forgot to inform everyone about Thursdays practice that is where I will begin today.

Thursdays practice went as expected, lots of reps. Bri officially was moved to top girl on my side of the first pyramid and we took one group out of the elite sequence. We also added in spring tucks. As me and Gera like to say..."sweating." We were supposed to have a 6am on Friday morning but since we had so much to learn Pat gave us the option of staying until 11 that night. Which we all took thankfully.

It was like beat up Laura day on Thursday. While the two sides of the cheer pyramid were reping our middle group was doing our stunt. Sander, our flier for the stunt, came down weird and body slammed me into the ground. She didn't get hurt though thank the lord and all she did was knock the wind out of me... and rip off my nail. I have fake nails by the way. Then at the end of practice we were throwing our elite basket and somehow Jaclyn came straight down and her foot slammed into my leg and I just felt my leg smash down into my ankle if that makes any sense.

Other than getting beat up practice went well. Team stunts were very good. At one point a bunch of us were hitting the wall and that turned into us getting very very slap happy. Finally the people in charge of closing the IAC kicked us out.

Now onto tonight's practice. Let me just say this. I am starting to understand what Pat is saying when he has me repeat "I am a machine" because today one of the first things we did was redo our first pyramid. So after all these long practices of tying to get the first pyramid to hit, he changes it. Though I will say this, this pyramid is a lot more visual and its a little bit easier to hold.

We spend most of our practice on pyramids today. We repd team stunt for a little bit, while the coed couples were working with the coed team. My group struggled a little bit today. We are hitting the stunt fine, we just need to clean it up... a ton. That's just one of the things on my list to work on.

Here is the kicker of today's practice. I have officially been given the hardest part in our routine. I now am holding the cheer pyramid. So on top of doing everything else along with holding the other two pyramids... I have another one added on. Today was my first day even attempting it and I'm pretty sure we could have given a doll new hair with how much was pulled out of my head. My shoulders have more shoe hickeys than they have all year, but as much as it sucks now, it will be worth it in a few months.

Pat asked me what I thought of holding the pyramid. If its for the benefit of the team and where the team wants to go then don't hesitate to put me in. Therefore...I'm in.

I kept telling Kelvin when we were done with each rep, "I need a harder workout plan for sure now." There is no way I will be able to hold this without working my ass off outside of practice.

They don't compete against us or anything, they are just so damn good and I need some inspiration if I am ever going to be able to make it through this routine.

When Life Hands you Lemons

We started practice with a speed bump. A talented coed flier decided to leave the team. Thank the lord we have an amazing back up flier, Bri. Bri was my flier on all-girl last year and she is by far one of the most talent fliers I have ever had the pleasure of working with. We took this set back as a challenge in my eyes. We worked hard at practice to learn the new changes and progress forward.

This practice was not going to be a running practice as previously planned, instead we were going to work on the elements of our routine with the new changes. We reped tumbling but nothing really changed there.

First pyramid took up the mass majority of our practice time. Last Thursday we noticed that each side of the pyramid was turning opposite ways; So Carter went and asked Pat which way he wanted us to turn. He returned to my displeasure saying that my side of the pyramid was turning the wrong way. I know this doesn't sound like a huge deal, but after doing rep after rep of turning one way and having to switch gets frustrating. So we had to rep like crazy just to get my side of the pyramid consistent again.

Back to tonight's practice...Molly, my pic (partner in crime) for holding pyramids, decided to ask Pat one more time which side was turning right. You could never guess what he said right? After watching each side do it their way, he decided that we were turning the correct way the entire time. So we had to rep again to relearn our technique. Thank the lord it did not take as long.

 

After this whole dilemma we had to run our side of the pyramid full out. After a while it starts to suck really bad being on the bottom of the pyramid. Mind you I don't have a back spot this entire time. Its just me and Church...and Jessy or Bri now, I'm not too sure. But anyways its funny because no matter how tired you are you need to just keep going. Think about it, if I fall or drop my primary flier, Church, then Jessy will fall. So I need to be on point at all times. Good thing I conditioned myself all summer. I remember the first day learning the pyramid and thinking "there is no way on Gods green earth that I will be able to hold this." That was also the point when Church was doing tap dances on my shoulders and giving me shoe hickeys every rep. For future reference a shoe hickey is a hickey from a shoe... or as my good friend Katie Sakala likes to describe it "if a bear mauled your shoulder like it was made of fresh meat after you spent 10 hours in the Mexican sun with no sunscreen."

Finally we moved onto the cheer pyramid. Which pretty much means break time for me. Well not really I had to work on our rewind stunt, but those are going well. We didn't spend much time on this pyramid today. Carter and Adam's side had a hit though!

Team stunt, to my surprise Bri was put as my flier! I was so ecstatic! We did not spend a long time here either, but each group is improving at a good pace. Even with the new flier switch we made it through the sequence.

Baskets were last. As expected I have to throw the all-girl basket. I really don't mind because Jaclyn is my flier and shes a fantastic basket girl. We did our normal warm up, and by the end we were able to throw our full out elite basket. The first ones were good and by the last one you could see an improvement.

Overall I think everyone had a good practice. We each were frustrated at times but as a team we pulled each other together and had a productive practice. It could have been disastrous being as a person quit we could have all just said screw it and quit too. But that's not the kind of team this is. Everyone who is on the mat is there for a reason, we want to go down and do the best we can do. Whether it be first place or last place. We are going to have more speed bumps along the way but these are the moments we are going to cherish when were down in Florida. We're going to remember the good times sure, but its these times where we had to overcome situations placed in front of us that we have no control over that we will be thankful for. This is when the real journey begins.

PS. Thank you Katie Sakala for the lovely picture!

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Today is my birthday and of course we had practice. Pat walked into practice and warned us he was in a bad mood. I'm glad he did because you know I would have been acting ridiculous. Team stunt went super good for my group today. We hit it full out multiple times. First pyramid was a little shaky. On Thursdays practice we had to relearn how to do our walk in because we were turning the wrong way the whole time. We didn't get to do gymnastics today either which I was bummed about. Cheer pyramid was not that good either. Now that I think about it today was just a rough day for pyramids. At the end of practice Pat said that this was our first "rough" practice, personally I didn't think it was that bad. Then again it was probably because it was my birthday and nothing could make me mad. But he was talking about how he doesn't know how our team chemistry is going to be. When we have rough practices we are supposed to bring each other up and I think we did a good job of it today.

For your enjoyment,

Not a Total Train Wreck

Today was our first day of running our routine and it was not a "total train wreck" like Pat thought it would be. We ran with full out tumbling, first part of the elite, middle layers of our first pyramid, basket timers, and the first part of our team stunt. It went really well! I personally hit all my tumbling, and my group for team stunt hit each time. It wasn't always pretty but a hits a hit...for now. The elite sequence is progressing very nicely also. I was surprised at how easy it was to get through the routine. Then again I only had to do a small portion of what I will be doing. Tomorrow is tryouts for all-girl and Coed and I'm kind of bummed that we wont be a part of it. I love seeing the potential new people for our team. But at the same time I'm living out my dream right now. For those of you who haven't seen a cheerleading routine, here is last years winners of the small coed division Hofstra University.

After 20 hours of practice, we finally finished our routine. All the elements are together all we have to do is hit them...all together. Already we are 6 weeks ahead of the team that went last year. If we do everything to the best of our ability we will do REALLY well. We learned one of Pats "competition lessons for hitting a routine" the first one of this journey is Composure. If you keep your composure while doing all the elements of the cheer your success rate will increase.

"I'm a machine"

This journey has already been more than a blessing for me. I have been working since last October to make this team. This is my dream. To compete at UCA (Universal Cheer Association) Nationals. We officially broke into our three teams Saturday September 9. Our first practice was a bit shaky, many of us have never had a nationals experience, we don't know how we should act. We are learning quickly of what Coach Pat's expectations are. Monday & Tuesday I went to open workouts, which are going to another teams practice, as I was killing my legs running my two miles worth of intervals around the track Pat stops me. "Repeat after me" he said, "I am a machine." so naturally I repeated after him throughout the rest of practice he would walk up to me "What are you?" he would ask, and I was to repeat "I am a machine." I still have no idea what this phrase is supposed to do for me, but as Pat keeps telling us we must trust in him and the journey. For now i'll just keep repeating it. This weekend has been choreography weekend. Yesterday we learned the entire first music part of our routine. Then we started working on the first pyramid. It looks cool considering I can only see whats going on above me. I have the honor of being on the bottom of the pyramid alongside Molly. This morning's practice we spent the entire first hour marking our formations, going back and forth making sure each time we all had big smiles on our faces looking up at where the judges will be. Then for the next few hours we worked on our cheer. Me, Molly, and Amanda are the flaggets this year. We already named our flags, Amanda's is Charlie, mine is Marvin, and Molly's is Ulysses. We have some pretty cool elements in our cheer and if we get them its going to look amazing. The last portion of practice we worked on our first pyramid. My side went great we did the entire thing, besides getting up to middle layers the way we will, continuous count. We finished practice with a full out mark and working on our team stunt. So far this nationals experience is going fantastic!