Thursday, March 10, 2011

Show me the Sparkles

If you have never been to a cheer competition, you seriously do not know what you’re missing.  And that is probably a good thing.  My daughter asked to take a cheer class a year or so ago, I’m thinking how cute.  Pom poms, football games, a few toe touches, should be fun.

Not so fast sweetheart, there are no pom poms in competitive cheer, there are no football games, and not only is the kid doing toe touches and back hand springs, but they throw her so far up in the air, during one competition she flew out of the video frame as I was filming her.

She is so darn cute I forget that we have to sit in a grimy coliseum all day just to see her perform for 3 and a half minutes.  In those few minutes, she is a shining product of me, I’m her mom and I am so freakin proud.  She is so awesome as she flips and flops, I almost forget how expensive this dang sport is.  Cheerleading makes my son’s baseball and my husbands hockey cost look like a walk in the park.  Thank God there is a money tree in that park, I walk there often.

She is not the best on the team and not the worst.  We never win.  I won’t bore you with the intricacies of this sport, but we are just not “that” team, and that’s o.k.  We are on mixed age team and my daughter is the youngest at 9, and the oldest girl is 18, we are currently looking for a team with more kids her age.  I’m tired of explaining to her why she is not allowed to have a nose ring.

            My real complaint is with the uniforms.  They are white, not flattering unless you’re super skinny, which, thank God, my kid inherited that genetic blessing.  The thin gene skipped over her mother.  They have some blue and gold, but otherwise totally bland.  Even our bows are boring.

You should see the other teams, blinged out form head to toe.  The bows, the make up, the shoes, well maybe not the shoes, but sparkle everywhere.  I ended up buying sparkly stickers to put on the girls faces.  I guess I was trying to “keep up with the Joneses of cheerleading”, so to speak.  But our uniforms, not one rhinestone, I mean come on, what’s the point.

So as we look for new gyms, we look at the uniforms first.  I know, I know, I need to ask questions like, how long has your program been around, what kind of experience do the coaches have?  I do ask those questions, but lets face it, for this kind of cash, I want more sparkles.

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