What Goes Around, Comes Around.

Half of the squad is now boys and these cheerleaders are now athletes. They are dancers, gymnasts, weightlifters and daredevils all-in-one. The co-ed stunting, the tumbling and the precision dance routines require daily time and dedication to execute. You will still see them at football games, but they don’t do much there. The focus of cheerleading now is to do well in competition. The pom pons have shrunken along with the uniforms, the swinging ponytails have been replaced with freeze dried hairdos reminiscent of some sort of ’60’s beehive and Friday night football is now 4 a.m. trips to catch the buses to these events.

You could imagine with this scenario that the kids would want to do well at competitions and not come in last place at every single one, which is what happened last year. Why would this be? Are the cheerleading genes stronger in neighboring areas? Is there something in our water preventing our kids from getting their stunts up in the air? Are the flooding the arena with some sort of gas when our kids go on, dizzying them into dropping their fellow rah rahs face first into the mats without even trying to catch them? Of course not.

That’s what happened last year because the cheerleading coach…well…sucked. He sucked so badly that I was sure I could do a better job and I’ve never been a cheerleader. I do know, though, that the stunts have to go up and you can’t have dead time in the performance where no one is even moving.

Not only did he suck, he was a self-centered ass, too, and you know how I just adore that personality trait.

After starting this year with his traditional motivators like “you suck” and “this is a waste of my time” to the kids, he posted a Facebook entry wondering if he should quit or continue to “chase pavement”. Darling. These are kids you are talking about, fool.

Quit. Please. It will save me the time and trouble of chasing your ass out of there. I have other things to worry about right now.

He did quit during the Homecoming football game and after the weekend of freaking out, wondering if cheer would be canceled this year and parents rightfully bitching a bit since we had just paid a lot of money for the skimpy uniforms, they moved the new Junior Varsity coach to the now empty Varsity position. Practice started Monday and something truly amazing happened.

By the end of the week, the kids who sucked so badly that they couldn’t even get one stunt in the air were now hitting every one of them. It seems the problem was not some faulty genetic process, it was that the previous coach never really taught them how to do these stunts, which explains why the flyers were falling and those basing the stunt constantly had bruised faces from getting kicked when they came down.

This weekend was the school’s Variety Show and the first appearance of the “new” cheerleading squad. You could see the confidence as they ran out on the stage. It was in the energy in the dance routine and in the pride on their faces when all four flyers went and stayed up in the air. They did it! The audience cheered for the cheerleaders and I (the weeping willow) got teary eyed. My babies! It was awesome.

And you know what else was almost as good? The fact that the old cheerleading coach was sitting in the second row. The kids could see him and when that spectacular stunt went up, he got wide eyed and jaw droopy. After the performance, he hung his head low and skunked right out of there, probably so a gang of cheerleading moms didn’t sting him like the beautiful scorpion stunt we just saw. It looked like this, only better because my kids were doing it.

Chasing pavement? How about pounding some sand, jackass?

Sometimes what goes around does come around and when it does, I’m not going to pretend I don’t enjoy it. Because I do.