Winning a Pass to ‘Finals’ by Angela Jones

When our coaches told us about the big competition the team was ready to work during the next practices these next two weeks. At the time I was on an all-star cheer team at the gym called Fame, my team was senior 4.2 Starstuck. The next competition would determine if we went to finals or not, which was a big competition to go to and you’re lucky to even place there. So, if we wanted to move on we had to be ready to work our butts off and hit a flawless routine. The weeks went by so fast and before I knew it I was in the car with my two friends I cheered with, Kelsey and Madison, driving to North Carolina for the competition. Once we got to the hotel, and settled in I relaxed a little. Most of the night we all stayed up talking about how the next day was going to go, and went over the routine in our heads a million times at least. We finally fell asleep and the next morning quickly came. Right when we walked into the competition building the anxiousness rushed over me like a wild beach wave. I was so nervous, many thoughts were running through my head like what if we drop a stunt or what if someone gets hurt. But once the team was all together, and the coaches gave us a pep talk all my worries went away. Now at competitions right before your team competes, you have warm ups, which is basically where everyone does their tumbling and stunts to warm up to compete. So we waited In the hall before warm ups everyone thinking about what their going to do. The worker lady finally tells us we can go we only have 6 minutes. The first mat is for stunts so everyone gets in their first or main stunt and we do it together with the counts, and we go on from there for all the other stunts. After that we go to tumbling mat where people can do any tumbling pass they have in the routine. Everything’s going by so quickly and I feel so nervous. Now we’re all waiting to compete next to the big stage below the steps. The team gets in a circle holding hands, everyone says whatever they need to and we say a little saying we always do right before we compete. The time comes and the announcer calls out our team name. We run up the steps, and onto the mat. Everyone gets to their spot and the music goes on. There is so much adrenaline and the lights are so bright. All I hear is the crowd cheering but it helps the energy. Im going through the routine everything is hitting, next thing I know the music is off and the crowd is going crazy. We get off the mat and our coaches have the biggest smile on their faces and they give everyone hugs. The team goes in a corner and we talk about everything and the coaches say it’s a spotless routine and it looked soo good. Everyone was so excited. There was about an hour till awards so I stayed in the stands to watch other teams on different levels. Then the announcers say its time for awards, and calls out my level, we all get on the mat and wait to hear the places. They call out 4^th , not us, they call out 3^rd, not us. This means were in top 2 but we want first. We sit waiting to hear him call out 2^nd , he finally does and its not us. Were so excited they then call out first which was us, we all jump up and go crazy. Then they got all the levels on the mat and there was a team who got overall best score. We sit there not thinking it would be us then all of a sudden they call out Fame Starstruck. Our coaches were in tears this is crazy we got best score! This means we don’t only get to go to finals but we get to stay in a water park hotel there. This was honestly one of the best moments ive experienced.