Saturday, June 27, 2009

DANGEROUS

Today I have been looking for MJ updates online when I came across this humdinger of a headline:

Cheerleading Most Dangerous Female Sport in U.S.

Well it's about time cheerleading is recognized as a sport, and if people want to call it the most dangerous female sport then even better.

An advocate of this fact years ago, my school always erred on the side of caution with what we were allowed to do. In junior high, if anyone hit the ground during a stunt, the entire squad was automatically "ground bound" for two weeks. I remember one time in seventh grade the stunt group I was a part of toppled backwards during a THIGHSTAND (yes, you read that correctly - how you fall over doing a thighstand is beyond me [maybe it's because we were trying to do a cradle off a thighstand?]) and consequently, all 12 of us were ground bound for two weeks. As the spotter of the aforementioned stunt group, I took the blame pretty hard.

My junior and senior year, we pushed the envelope as much as we could regarding what stunts we were allowed to do. This was largely in part because we finally hauled off and got help from someone besides our coach - a real, certified cheerleading/stunting professional who owned his gym. He worked our fancy little butts off and it was totally worth it when we finally unveiled our super-cool stunt (the Runner's Lunge!) at the pep rally a blood, sweat and tears-fueled four months after we'd first started practicing it.

All laughing aside, cheerleading can be dangerous. Broken arms, broken noses* and broken legs were just a small part of what I saw during my six years shaking my pom-poms. But perhaps the most dangerous of all, more than stunting or dancing or inhaling all the paint fumes, were the bus rides.

True Story: one time our bus entered the freeway on an exit ramp.
True Story: one time our bus jumped a curb.
True Story: our cheerleading coach drove our bus.

Oh, I miss cheerleading. I think this Christmas I am going to organize a ten-year reunion of the Mighty Ducks. I think most of them read this anyway. Who's in?

*Just because my hand accidentally hit her face does not mean I went off and broke her nose, okay?

6 comments:

  1. how do you remember all this stuff?! leah sat on my face once (i know, it sounds really gross), trying to do a cradle. my nose bled. and hurt. and i think it's funny. :)

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  2. Please have a reunion in our basement and recreate the redneck beauty pageant!!!

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  3. Katie, Mrs. Lamb would have grabbed the tampons and stuck one up your nose!

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  4. i just read this and laughed out loud, do you remember the time i fell from a full extension when i was on jv? i think we were in chelsea performing at half time, it wasnt funny at the time, but i can certainly laugh now,anyway, i am still laughing about mrs lamb and being 'groun bound', keep up the great post... ml

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  5. No, we weren't on JV together. I was still cheering for basketball in ninth grade.
    I think Ground Bound started with Mrs. Maddox, no?

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  6. Hey! All the Mighty Ducks can bring their little ducklings to the reunion!!

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Oh goody!

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