Dear Grinders,
With Mother’s Day fast approaching, I decided to let my readers in on a parenting issue I have recently been struggling with. First, I have a confession to make: I use to be a cheerleader. Now before you start judging me, I wasn’t just the stereotypical football or basketball cheerleader that stood on the sidelines and looked pretty. I also cheered competitively for my high school squad, the Lakota West Firebirds. So imagine my excitement when my daughter came to me and asked me if she could be a cheerleader like Mommy was. My mother use to show her all my old pictures and videos from my days as a Firebird. I started taking her to classes at an all-star cheerleading gym. My excitement only grew when I discovered that her new gym in Atlanta has a “Tiny” squad where little girls beginning at age five could tryout and upon making the team would compete locally. I signed her up, but as tryout day came closer, I became more anxious and started interfering with her instructor during classes by dictating what I wanted her to work on. If she wasn’t stretching properly, I was on her. SMH… I’m ashamed to admit it, but I was becoming one of those “cheer moms” that push their kid too hard because they take it too seriously. You see, I just wanted her to make the squad so that she could have fun and enjoy the same experiences I did. Some where, however, I sensed myself crossing the line and had to fall back.
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All of these feelings reminded me of the situation that ultimately made me stop cheering. In the years before my time on the squad, the team had not been successful, but when my freshman year arrived the coach put together a whole new squad. We all had different cheer backgrounds, some more experienced than others, but what we had in common was the determination and desire to be the best. Sounds cliche, I know, but there is no other way to describe the bond that we built after all the obstacles we overcame in such a short time. Forget the underdogs, we weren’t even on the map as competitors to be concerned with. So after working out all summer long and just striving to do our best by our own standards, we never expected to come in and sweep our first competition. Once we realized our potential, though, there was no looking back. We aimed high at every competition even when we were up against the powerhouse teams. For two years, we won title after title and we’re considered by our peers to be champions, the team to beat. To us, however, it was much more simple than that. We were having fun exceeding people’s expectations of us and shocking the cheer community. We didn’t push ourselves to the limit because we had to, we did it because we could and it made us strong as a team when we held each other accountable.
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It wasn’t until my third year, when everyone wanted to tryout for our championship team that I realized winning wasn’t just a goal anymore, it was expected. The pressure to win, put on us by the community, our coaches, and even ourselves at times, proved to be too much and the soul of our squad started to change. Having fun wasn’t even an option anymore. If we weren’t pushing until we were broken and miserable, then it wasn’t enough. I decided to le
