My Journey to Varsity Cheerleading

by Abby Moody

  Once she finished, she gave a huge smile to Coach Rebecca, but she didn’t smile back. She looked down and briskly darted out of the cafeteria doors to the parking lot. I was watching the strange interaction when Jenny leaned over and asked if I wanted to go celebrate at Taco Bell.

  “We don’t even know the results yet.”

  “So what. We all made the varsity team I’m sure of it. Victoria is going... come with us.” She said standing up and grabbing her backpack.

  My mom picked up me and Jenny from the school, and drove us to Taco Bell. During the car ride, I filled in my mom all about tryouts and how I perfectly executed my standing tuck on the court. Little did they know the fifteen other times I ate grass in the backyard the night before. I also told her about my “happiness” answer, and how embarrassed I was. Jenny and my mom laughed it off, and said I would be fine. My mom was so excited, she said her and dad would take me to my favorite Thai restaurant that night to celebrate.

  I mean after all, with so many seniors leaving the varsity team because they were graduating, there were tons of open spots for varsity. My friends and I, being the up and coming sophomore class from the junior varsity team, knew we would have it in the bag for varsity. Chances were slim if you had never been a part of the cheerleading squad before, to make it on varsity the first time. So, with only six freshmen from junior varsity becoming sophomores, there would be no way that we all wouldn’t be moved up to varsity. I hope this all makes sense! It can get a little confusing how the cheerleading world of junior varsity vs. varsity all works.

  We sat in a secluded area in the back corner of Taco Bell next to Victoria and all the of the upperclassmen cheerleaders. When we sat down, no one even acknowledged our presence. This was always completely normal. They were all talking about their tryout performance.

  Eve went on about Victoria, “I got to peak through the door window, and your toe touch was amazing!”

  I cracked a smile, and quickly looked out the window to hide it. Victoria caught me and asked, “Abby, how’d you do at tryouts?”

  “Ehh, I did okay. I messed up a little on the cheer and dance.” I lied.

  I felt Eve’s eyes looking at me with curiosity. She knew. She had watched my tryout through the little window in the door.

  “Well, Abby. I’m sure you’ll be fine.” She forced an obvious fake smile.

  “Actually… she did a standing back tuck.” Jenny chimed in.

  I really wish she didn’t say anything.

  “Oh. Did you land?” Victoria asked with clear jealousy.

  “Yeah, I did.” I said, dipping my head down.

  Her hazel eyes looked like daggers about to pierce through my soul. She dropped her voice and whispered, “That’s great.”

  The door creaked opened and I saw two senior football players walk inside. Behind them was Dawson. My heart leapt. I instinctively combed my fingers through my hair.

  “Oh hey Dawson!” Victoria said, as she got up to hug him. “We’re all celebrating being varsity cheerleaders!”

  “Is that right?” Dawson asked as he glanced towards me.

  Dawson and his buddies sat in a booth next to us. Everyone joked and laughed for several minutes catching up on each other’s day. Everyone was carrying on conversations around me, but I kept to myself and remained silent. Out of the blue, Victoria loudly said, “So Abby I was driving by your house the other day...” I looked up, and noticed several heads turn to look at me. I nervously put down my cinnamon twist I was about to eat.

  “Yeah? What were you doing?” I asked in hopes she would say to see if I wanted to hang out.

  “To go to Jenny’s house.” She said looking at Jenny, with a sly smile. She continued even louder, “But I couldn’t help but notice… you were on your trampoline.”

  My face flushed red.

  The other cheerleaders laughed. Jenny sat in silence beside me.

  “I was just practicing.”

  “Practicing for what?” Eve asked with a sarcastic tone.

  “For cheer tryouts...”

  “Abby. You practice way too much for cheer.” Victoria said. Dawson stopped talking to his friends and tuned in. She continued, “I mean it’s like your whole life. A little excessive don’t you think?”

  “Aren’t you on that Planet Cheer team too? How old are all those girls on that team? They seem pretty young...” Victoria said knowing she was pushing my buttons. The girls stared at me for a response. Dawson and his friends were also waiting. Everything fell silent.

  I grabbed my purse and bolted out the door. I made sure I was out of sight, and slid my back down the side of the building. I dropped to the ground and buried my face in my knees. Tears instantly soaked my jeans. How could Victoria say all of that in front of Dawson? What were they talking about now? They were probably all laughing…

  It was 7:45 p.m. and my parents and I were heading to the school to look at the results. After we had taken Jenny home, I vented to my parents about what happened in Taco Bell. They made me feel better by saying the problems will be solved when we’re all on the same level, on the same varsity team.

  My dad was driving the black Armada, and we pulled up to the front of the high school. I told my parents to wait in the car. The long walk to the doors seemed like I was in a Harry Potter movie... Nervously walking through the corridor as if Voldemort himself was about to pop out through the doors ahead.

  Two pieces of paper were posted on the double doors. The paper to the left read “Varsity Cheer 2009” and the one on the right read “Junior Varsity 2009.” Several girls I recognized from tryouts were already reading the papers. Some were jumping for joy. Others were leaving in tears.

  I read the paper to the left first. The names were randomly typed. I saw Jenny’s name first. Then I saw Victoria’s.

  Wait.

  I read over the list several times. There was a mistake. My name wasn’t printed. I needed to call them to correct it. I whipped out my hot pink razor flip phone, and began to look up Coach Rebecca’s number. But then...

  I glanced over to the right. I saw my name printed on the junior varsity paper.

  CHAPTER SIX: DEVESTATED

  “She is on a level five competitive cheer team! What do you mean her skills weren’t enough?” My dad asked Coach Brooklyn on the phone.

  I laid my head against the car window. Tears streamed down my face, and onto the glass.

  “Are you serious?! She has the skills to be on varsity and you know it!” He said with anger. “She can try next year? No. This will be fixed this year. I hope you know I will be going to the superintendent about this!”

  My thoughts were fogged. This had to be a nightmare. Cheerleading meant everything to me. It was my world.

  “What do you mean you’re going on spring break vacation? How can you do that? You just crushed a girl. This meant everything to her.” My dad said to Coach Brooklyn. She had told him she was going to Mexico for spring break and didn’t want to deal with the situation.

  They finally ended the conversation with my dad saying he will get his hands on the score sheets when she returns from her tropical vacation. When they hung up, he apologized over and over to me. He said he will stop at nothing to find out what happened. I don’t think I had ever seen him that angry. I was happy he was fighting for me though. My mom was too. My parents still wanted to take me to eat Thai food. I didn’t talk the whole meal but only muttered a few words. My heart was torn. None of it made sense. Tears seeped into my lips, making my Pad Thai noodles extra salty. I had barely made a dent in my pile of noodles before I pushed my plate away.

  The little bronze bell that hung above the front door jingled as a crowd of people walked inside. One of the lady’s looked oddly familiar. I racked my brain trying to remember where I’ve seen her before. Then it hit me.

  She was the friend of Coach Brooklyn – Melissa, the other judge at cheer tryouts. She saw me looking at her and she turned and walked the other way, to take a table on the oppo
site side of the restaurant. I wanted her to look at me. I wanted her to see the hurt in my eyes. I wanted her to see the devastation she just caused me.

  My dad asked who I was looking at.

  “She’s the third judge. The friend of Coach Brooklyn... her name is Melissa.”

  “Oh really?” He asked setting his napkin on the table beside his plate of crispy chicken.

  “Dad. Don’t talk to her, you’ll make a scene.”

  “Just trust that I’ll be nice.” He said. I knew how much the conversation would mean to him. I glanced at my mom and said, “I will be in the car then. Want to join?”

  “Dear, be nice to her okay?” My mom said to my dad as we got up and headed towards the door. My mom and I got in the car and anxiously waited several minutes. We didn’t say a word to each other the whole time.

  “So how’d it go?” My mom asked as my dad opened the car door.

  “Fine, actually. She was nice about it.”

  “Were you nice though?”

  “Yes, I was nice! I said I would be.” My dad continued, “She said she had nothing to do with it, and was out of the loop when teams were chosen. She scored Abby well, and thought she should have made the varsity team with the other girls… she was actually shocked to find out she was put on junior varsity.”

  “Then that was pointless talking to her.” I made a snide comment from the back seat.

  “Not exactly. She’s going to be the new varsity coach. Coach Brooklyn is stepping down this year. And she’ll be –”

  “What?!” I interrupted. “What do you mean she’s ‘stepping down’?”

  “Apparently she’s quitting and asked Melissa to take her place.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Then why the heck was she judging tryouts when she knew she was quitting?” My voice rose higher.

  “I don’t know Abby. But like I told you, I will get to the bottom of this. Something isn’t right.”

  That night when we got home, my mom asked if I wanted to watch Smallville with them. I told her thanks but no, I needed some alone time. I was mad. Actually, I was more than mad. I was infuriated and hurt. My heart was broken.

  I walked outside and hopped onto my trampoline. I laid there on the black surface under the cloudy, grey sky for several hours. Not only was I thinking about going to school after all that and having to deal with the awkward questions about cheer, but also my dream to be on varsity was crushed after I had worked so hard. Cheer was my whole life. It was where I got my confidence from. Without that…what do I have? Of course, I’m still on the junior varsity team. But, I was the oldest one. The rest were freshman. That was just embarrassing. Most of those girls didn’t even care about cheerleading as a sport. They made fun of me for doing it too much…

  I couldn’t even stand to think about what Dawson would think. I knew Victoria would be around him all the time now. She would be cheering and flirting with him from the sidelines, with me in the stands watching it all happen.

  How am I supposed to tell Coach Shawn at Planet Cheer? Or my teachers and classmates that have been wishing me good-luck all week? My anger was heightening quickly. Full of emotions, I jumped to my feet. I pointed to the darkness above.

  “How could you do this to me?!” I yelled. “Why did you put it in my mind that I would make it? Now I’ll be the laughing topic of the team.” I dropped to my knees, gritted my teeth, and continued. “How could a God that loves me let me fail?!”

  I waited for an answer. Mascara blurred a trail down my cheeks.

  “ANSWER ME!”

  I waited… nothing. Just silence. My face hit the black surface as I sobbed, “Why would you do this to me? I thought you loved me. I go to church. What else do you want?!”

  I laid there wondering why God would let an upsetting event happen in my life since I was a Christian. It was clear that something wasn’t right with the scores. Something fishy was up, and I was going to find an answer.

  I finally looked up and said, “Where do I go from here? Give up cheer altogether? And go into hiding? Because that’s what I want to do. To crawl under a rock and live there forever.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN: DR. WHACK

  The rest of the school year was a drag. I couldn’t even decide if I wanted to cheer at all on junior varsity. I never felt so empty. After many painful questions from family members, friends, Dawson, and my competition team, you could say I was ready for summer to start.

  My confidence was shot. I felt like giving up. My practices for competition cheer began slacking. I wasn’t myself. I didn’t even want to try and talk to Dawson at school anymore. I was too embarrassed. My parents’ anger continued to increase. They did everything they could to find an answer. They even contacted the superintendent of the school. He said the cheer coaches had all of the score sheets shredded immediately after try outs.

  Before I knew it, the last school bell rang of freshman year. My parents wanted to take me and a friend on a camping trip celebrating the beginning of summer. I asked Hannah to come along with me. My parents had just bought a brand new pop-up camper and thought of no better place to break it in than Shoel Creek. It was a small, almost deserted campground in Missouri. It was notorious for its sketchy night life at the dancing club that sits beside the smelly creek. From everything I had heard, it raged every Saturday night packed with teens dirty dancing on sticky floors in the smoke filled atmosphere.

  My parents weren’t aware of this reputation of course. They believed it was a safe family environment for camping.

  The day we arrived, my parents set up the pop-up camper while Hannah and I sat in the car eating all the peach gummy rings, leaving our lips covered in sugar. We moved our stuff into the camper, and headed to the creek for some canoeing.

  The creek was murky, brown, and smelled like dead fish. Hannah and I were in one canoe, and my parents in another. About an hour into the trip, we slowly pulled ahead of them.

  “So, do you want to talk about what happened with cheer?” Hannah brought it up because she knew it bothered me, and wanted to help.

  “Not really.”

  “Abb. You can tell me anything. I want to help. You seem like you’re depressed ever since.” She expressed with genuine concern.

  “It was just my dream. You know? And Victoria and the other cheer people aren’t making it any easier.”

  “What’s Victoria doing?”

  “She’s just putting me down constantly in front of others. It all started around tryouts. Before then she was fine… Now even after tryouts she’s done it several times. Always bragging about being on varsity.”

  “Ugh… I’m sorry Abb. That’s super crappy.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and changed the subject. I didn’t like talking about it to anyone. I was still embarrassed. We had about an hour of heart to heart conversation about her love for her boyfriend and my problems with Dawson.

  That evening, my parents were getting everything ready for the bonfire. Hannah and I noticed a mini-golf course by the check-in office and decided to play a quick game.

  We were the only ones on the course that evening. We didn’t exactly play by the rules. There was a six-foot waterfall beside one of the holes, so we played a game to see who could hit the ball into the top of the waterfall. We took several turns, and neither one of us could do it.

  We tried to hit it harder.

  I swung as hard as I could, and managed to get the ball to the tallest rock beside the waterfall. It bounced off, and rolled behind Hannah. I walked over to retrieve it, and bent down.

  WHACK.

  I dropped to my knees, and crumbled to the ground. Grabbing the top of my head. Hannah was screaming.

  “Abby! Abby! Talk to me! Are you okay?!” She was panicking.

  My mind was unclear. I looked at my hand. It was dripping in blood. Hannah picked me up, ran across the entire golf course of obstacles. She hopped mini streams and several large rocks.

  “Someone! Anyone! Please help!!” She yelled. I looked down
and saw my blue Planet Cheer shirt soaking in deep red blood.

  “I’m a nurse!” A lady answered from a nearby campsite. “I’m calling 9-1-1, just get her to sit down and stay calm.”

  She sat me down on the concrete sidewalk. I was more confused why my best friend had just hit me in the head with a golf club.

  “Okay. Ambulance is on the way. Now tell me what happened?” The lady bent down beside me, observing the top of my head through her hot pink glasses.

  Hannah sobbed and barely formed words.

  “I accidently… hit her… in the head.” She started crying harder and finished, “with a golf club.”

  I heard sirens getting closer. Hannah suddenly took off to go tell my parents what happened. A few moments later, the ambulance arrived the same time as my parents. A man jumped out of vehicle and ran over to us.

  “Now, which one is hurt?” He asked, looking from me to Hannah, who was also covered in blood and crying more than me.

  My mom pointed to me, and they did several things to my head I don’t recall. They said I would be okay, but I needed to either ride in the ambulance with them to the hospital, or my parents could drive me.

  My parents decided to take me themselves. The only doctor available in the entire hospital was Dr. Whack. Strange coincidence don’t you think?

  He told me I’d need staples in the gash on top of my head. All I could picture was an actual stapler. My parents tried to comfort me and said, “Oh Abby, it’s not an actual stapler. It’ll be something much more medical.”

  Just then, Dr. Whack stepped back into our little room. To add on to the torment… a chunk of my hair was shaved off.

  He gave me a few numbing shots in the head, and then pulled out the staple gun. My worst nightmare came alive. It actually resembled a construction staple gun. I almost passed out of pure fear.

  I held my mom’s hand as he finished shaving, and proceeded to put four staples in my head. Dr. Whack told me it’d be several weeks before he could remove them, and I couldn’t do any kind of tumbling for at least four weeks. Hannah was beside her self, crying while standing next to my dad. I told her about thirty times I had forgiven her, and I wasn’t mad at all. I knew it was a complete accident. Actually, it was my fault if anything. I explained that to her, but she kept apologizing like a broken record.