Cheer Talk

Well, the cheer season is over for my squad. We've ended early, because as much as I love multi-tasking, I figured maybe I should dedicate some solid attention to book promotion for the first few months after DRAMA comes out.

And since cheerleading takes up a great deal of energy, I knew it would be near impossible to do both.

So we cut our season short by a month or so.

But what an awesome year my girls had!

We had a winning streak going - placing first in all of our competitions this year - three in all.

So we were pumped, to say the least, to hit Nationals this weekend. Reach-The-Beach is about the biggest recreational Nationals around these parts - most of them cater to All-Star teams - so we've been gunning for a Reach-The-Beach National Championship for two years.

Two years ago, we hit the Beach and competed against seven other teams.

We placed fifth.

This year, same number of teams, but much better results.

2nd place, baby!!!

I'm so proud of my girls.

And bless their hearts, they're so fiercely competitive (like their coaches) that, at first, they were bummed to take 2nd.

We had to explain to them that #1 they beat out six teams, #2 two years ago we didn't even place #3 this was Nationals, the big dance, our SuperBowl.

It would have felt great to take first and keep our First Place streak going. But the team who beat us out, Central Dauphin, were awesome. The entire team had standing back handsprings!

For those uninitiated in all things cheer-related - for an entire squad of rec cheerleaders to have a standing back handspring is pretty impressive. Tumbling is rarely a requirement for rec cheering, even competitive squads like mine.

You want them to have it and you look favorably upon girls who come to the squad who have the skill. But you rarely mandate it.

So, this year, it was literally one of those things where my girls could have done nothing to beat Central Dauphin (short of them screwing up their routine, which was pretty flawless) because we were outscored when it came to tumbling.

You know what that means? More of our girls will be "encouraged" to tumble next year.

And everyone on the squad knows what "encouraged" means.

Un-huh, they're getting their private tumbling sessions together now well before next season begins.

Congrats to my Hornet Honeys. I love you guys!!

Rest up, next season is only four months away....and tryouts only two!!