It Is Not As Easy As It Seems

It’s not as easy as it seems. Being a cheerleader that is. I have two examples that come to mind when laughter has helped me out of an uneasy situation. One example comes from cheering with Diamonds, the second comes from cheering with the Oak Hill Raiders. I have been a base my whole life and recently during my senior year I got the courage to try flying. I never once in my life thought that I would ever get the chance to fly due to my size and knee issues but during my very last season, I got the opportunity. Like I said, I have been a base my whole life and I always believed that was the hardest job of the group. It is not as easy as it seems, basing that is. We get punched, kicked, elbowed, and thrown around. We are the bottom of the pyramid so we catch anything that falls to the ground, even if that means we have to throw ourselves on the ground first so our bodies will break the flyers fall. It is no lie that bases get beaten up. Bases deal with sprained or broken wrists, concussions, whiplash, broken noses, black eyes, and more. Flyers also do not make basing the easiest. When they don’t do their jobs it makes it harder for the bases to do theirs.

Diamonds is an elite cheering team in Lewiston that I was on for almost 2 years, the team offers year round cheerleading and offers multiple teams to compete on. I was on the first ever non-tumbling open team. Meaning we did no tumbling and anyone over the age of 14 could be on the team. We had a range of ages from fourteen to thirty-two. The team was getting ready for our national competition in New Jersey. We were a level 5 team which means we perform them the higher level stunts. My stunt group got stuck on this one stunt, we just could not get in sync with each other. It was a one-eighty twist, one legged extension, front fall into a cradle. Now I understand almost no one will understand what kind of stunt that is. Just think of it as someone (the flyer) crouching into two other peoples (bases) hands, facing away from the audience. Then the bases twist the flyer as they throw her up into the air, and catch her right foot again facing the audience now. She has now done her one-eighty turn and is now in a one legged extension. After this step of the stunt, the flyer will fold her body in half from the extension and fall forward, completing a braced front flip, landing into a cradle. From an experienced base this stunt is not very hard, the hard part is when no one can get in sync and the flyer continues to fall on the bases heads. Me being a base in this stunt would get frustrated as the coaches scold us, making it known that we need to be better. Time after time of the stunt not hitting correctly and me getting knocked in the head, kicked in the face, and my fingers jammed, I was frustrated. Everyone was arguing and blaming fault on anyone but themselves for the reason of the stunt failing. After the flyer came down and landed on my neck, totally knocking the wind out of me, I was forced to take a break.

I left, took a deep breath, got some water, and came back to the stunt group. Then me and the girls talked. Not about the stunt but about our day and our attitudes, after making a couple jokes and saying some encouraging words to each other, we try the stunt again. We hit it! Perfectly, the team was so proud. All it took was for the whole group to take a second and breath, change our outlook, drop the attitudes, laugh a second, hear some encouragement, and bam. We did it.

The second example of when laughter helped get me out of an uneasy situation is when I tried flying for the first time. This fall season with the Oak Hill Raider cheerleaders, I had the opportunity to fly. For more than half the season I would not let my teammates put me in the air but before a performance we had a couple girls quit so we were in a sticky situation. So I said F it and jumped into the stunt. I was so nervous, I could not stop shaking. I had always thought basing was the hardest roll in the group but in that moment I knew I was wrong. Flying was so much harder. The trust you must hold for your stunt group not to drop you in tremendous because if you can’t be a confident flyer then the stunt will go down. If you have decent bases, the whole stunt depends on the flyer. It took me a couple tries to get over my fears and anxiety but after I had a couple laughs with the team and them convincing me how dumb it is for me to be scared (in a good way) I went up and couldn’t stop laughing because I was so proud of myself. Eventually I ended up going into an extension and again I could not stop laughing. It was as if laughing was taking over my nerves and made the adrenaline a good feeling. I loved it and I couldn’t have done it if I would have not let out my nerves through laughter. As scared as I was that day, I have never regretted my decision.

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