There was way more interests in these two stories than I had anticipated! If you’ve come for gossip and tea, you have come to the *wrong* place. The stories may not be interesting in that aspect, but I think they definitely both have important lessons to take away.
So, without further ado, why one of my biggest college accomplishments didn’t last.
Why College Cheer?
If you didn’t know, I cheered competitively 8th grade through my junior year of high school at a cheer gym called United Force. I originally stopped cheering after my Junior year because I suffered from mental blocks which started to make the sport more stressful than fun for me. If you’re not familiar with cheer, mental blocks are essentially when you’re physically capable of a skill but psych yourself out mentally to the point where you feel like you just can’t do it. I still feel like those were my glory days… I don’t think I’ve been anywhere near as active as I was during that time frame since I stopped cheering the first time😅. Here are some pictures from the competitive cheer years just so that I have an excuse to ~ reminisce~.
I never cheered for my school, and was overall the least involved in my high school that I possibly could have been. I hated high school (that’s another story for another time!) and really didn’t want anything more to do with it than what was required.
Senior year Amber however, wanted things to be different in college. I wanted to be super involved and do alll the things. I hadn’t cheered since the end of my junior year in spring 2016, but a year later in early 2017 I decided that I wanted to try out for college cheer. I started to take private tumbling lessons to get all my skills back and managed to do so, for the most part, in time for Kent State Cheerleading Tryouts in May 2017.
The night before tryouts I had convinced myself that I actually wasn’t going to do it. I was overwhelmed by anxiety and self doubt. I wanted to avoid any chance of experiencing embarrassment and feelings of failure like I did after not making the 7th grade school cheer team (don’t worry, I convinced all my friends at the time that I really didn’t care lol). But, the morning of tryouts came and I got up early and decided I WAS going to do it. I wasn’t going to give into my anxiety like I had done time and time again.
I was so nervous I probably could’ve puked. I barely talked throughout the day and had to constantly give myself mini pep talks throughout the try out day. I ended up doing my round off back handspring tuck on a non spring floor for the very first time in my life at tryouts- I was SO proud of myself, and honestly shocked! We also had to run a mile and I thought I was going to die- working out is not my speciality.
I ultimately ended up making the team as an alternate. I was labeled an alternate because a standing tuck was “required” to be on the team. I had mine, but not confidently on a non spring floor. I was still super proud of myself and so were those who knew me!
My College Cheer Experience
My time on the team was very short lived. In the beginning, I was riding the high of making the team and getting to attend community events in my new Kent State University uniform. I thought I was so cool. Getting to go to these events to represent my future college was super exciting and fun. I kind of forgot about the fact that I would actually have to be cheering again at some point.
We had our cheer camp in August where we began to practice chants, stunts, jumps, and more for the first time together as a team. This is when I slowly but surely started to realize making the team sounded much better than it was.
I started to experience the same stress I had during my earlier years of cheers regarding tumbling, but this time it was worse. Competitive cheerleaders tumble on spring floors typically, but obviously there aren’t spring floors at sporting events. Although I had solid tumbling skills for my experience, I was never really a confident tumbler. The idea of tumbling on a hard floor was terrifying to me… and painful lol
I always loved stunting though, so I was excited to get back into this. There were so many really talented girls on the team. However, some of them were gymnasts who had never stunted before or cheerleaders who were trying new positions for the first time. Because of this, we had to start with the basics and I felt like I was taking a step back as far as stunting skills and that was a bummer
Also, let me remind you that I had never been a school cheerleader before. The chants, spirit waves, and idea of being a side show rather than the main attraction was new to me… and quite frankly not for me. I’m definitely not bashing school cheerleading- a lot of my competitive teammates were school cheerleaders as well. It’s just not for everyone!
Deciding to Quit
I really started to mentally draft my pros and cons list after the camp ended and the start of my freshman year and the cheer season began to come closer. I had to ask myself.. I’m putting myself through added stress my first year of college to be a part of something I’m proving to not enjoy, agreeing to 5:45AM practices Monday-Thursday, and committing myself to attending sporting events for what exactly? To say I’m a college cheerleader?
That may have seemed worth it in the beginning.. I honestly probably had this overly fantasized vision of me being a hot college cheerleader who was besties with the whole team and got to talk to all the cute athletes, completely forgetting that I had severe social anxiety and looked like this-
Cringe 😬 We live and we learn right? I didn’t really have any friends on the team at that point in addition to everything else. At the time my social anxiety was still pretty bad, and so were my insecurities. I was quite frankly really intimidated by most of the girls on the team because I felt as if they were soo much more talented, outgoing, and prettier than me. I made myself feel like an outcast that wasn’t good enough with these thoughts and that pushed me to not interact with most of the girls, meanwhile they were all quickly forming relationships with eachother.
So given my lengthy cons list, the day before classes and practices were officially supposed to start, I had made my decision. I was going to quit before I was in too deep. I typed out my “farewell” email to the head coach, read it over and over again, then asked my freshman year roommate probably 50 times throughout the day whether or not I should send it.
As soon as I hit send, it felt as if a HUGE weight was lifted off my shoulders and in that moment I knew I had made the right decision for myself. The coach seemed understanding and just asked that I return the uniforms, poms, and shoes that I had. I was sad I had to give up the shoes, they were comfy lol. The coach also made me pay for things that she said I would receive, but never did so I was a little salty about that ngl!
Lesson to Learn
I was scared to disappoint the coach, let the team down, and struggled with feelings of “giving up” too soon. But ultimately, I had to trust that I knew what I wanted. I had to do what I felt was necessary to stay in good mental health. I’m proud of myself for doing that because in the past I’ve been a people pleaser to a fault. At the end of the day, I never regretted my decision and the team obviously continued on without me! And I am still so proud of freshman Amber to this day of stepping out of her comfort zone to try out!
It’s really important to remember to be selfish sometimes, especially while you’re young. You can’t make decisions based on how you feel others will react, and completely disregard your own feelings. At the end of the day, it’s YOUR life so YOU need to make the decisions YOU feel are best for YOU.
