Chapter 3: I will dare*

So before I actually continue with the boy drama.
So you can skip on through if you just want to hear about the boys...straight to Chapter 5 :)
I think I want to expand more on my friendship with Cammy and my experience with cheerleading in high school...because I think it has something to do with my relationships.  You see a lot of what I learned from relationships and other things came from me watching Cammy go through it first.  You see we got closer and closer as the years went by in high school.

During our first year on the cheerleading team together she was good...she was a star!
She picked things up faster then anyone else.
She was a natural...I on the other hand was not.
I didn't compete my entire first year until the last competition of the season.
When they would run routines I would literally wind the tape to the perfect spot, practice all my substitution roles along side and memorize everyones counts and positions.
Cammy only sat out the first competition before she had a staring role...top of the pyramid of course.
Our friendship was slow to start...but forged strong none the less.
Like I said before I was NOT a natural but I loved the sport (and no I'm not going to argue with anyone about the fact on if it is a sport or not).

The cheerleading team was a tough thing in my first year.
Getting braces that year certainly did not help the matter.
Though it was undergoing a huge change with the coaching and the new discipline there still was a decent carry over of the "popular" girls...the ones that made the uniforms look great.
They were mean and viscious.
I remember they were not happy that some band nerd had made the team and I wasn't even that great (I know this had to bother them immensely).  I'm so glad I stuck it out though because being on that team changed my life...heck it changed my soul and who I was.

How difficult was it?  I think it is much harder to be a chick than a dude.
Boys can scrap throw a few punches and be done with it.
Well girls cut with looks, words and attitude...and they can cut straight to the bone.
There was a handful of girls and one in particular.  Jaimilyn.
She was AWFUL. 
She used to say to me after EVERY single practice (I don't know why I took this bullying for so long)
"We don't know how you got on this team.  We don't WANT you on this team.  In fact no one wants you here...you should quit".
I would just take it and a swallow it like a jagged little pill. (shout out to my Canadian girl Alanis haha).
I would take it in silence and then I would go home and cry.
I would never cry in front of them.
I would go home and cry and then dry my tears and then do double what we did at practice.
Yup if that day we did 50 push ups and 50 situps then I would do 100 push ups and 100 situps (not in a row all the time but I finished that number before I went to bed).
I would practice the dances and motions until I could do them in my sleep.
If there was optional training in tumbling I took the class. 
You get the idea.

I stuck through that for a whole year.
I remember with a cold hard reality what it was like to go to the year end party at the captain's house Amanda.  We were all watching the video from provincials together on her big screen TV.
All of a sudden the video changed to inside one of the rooms...and Jaimilyn.
She went into an impression of me "Look at me I'm Teagan...I love cheerleading so much that I will take all the crap of the team...I didn't get to actually compete until the last competition of the season and I thought it was the greatest...you know what would be the greatest if I dropped dead."
The silence in the room was deafining. 
I remember stammering "ummm I better go now".
Running upstairs I could hear someone say "that was cold Jaimilyn".
I ran the whole way home.

Over that summer our coach Pete made things even more disciplined.
We had summer practices at parks and the beach (running in the sand is so NOT glamorous).
The more disciplined and seriously athletic it got the faster the "popular" girls dropped like flies.
And finally in the September of my 11th grade.
Jaimilyn's bad attitude finally caught up with her.
She missed two practiced (not acceptible with our new solid disciplinary rules).
And when coach Pete asked what was up she answered him with "who the f*ck are you?!"
And that was the day she was kicked off the team :)
It was a great day for me.

Cheerleading really changed who I was.
I learned how to set goals and accomplish them.
I realized from how horrible Jaimilyn treated me that I would never do that to another teammate.
I loved our team so much.
I had my dad sponser us custom duffel bags.
We welcomed rookies on to the team with famous sleepovers and barbeques at my house.
We became a family.
And Cammy was my best friend on the team.
We grew really close especially during my 11th grade her 10th grade year.

How close?  Well it would take one trip to the ER under really scary circumstances to find out how close we would be.

To be continued...
Teagan