I was cleaning out a file cabinet today and found a DVD, there for nearly three years, just gradually being buried under installation software and owners manuals. I sat there looking at it for a minute debating, but knew I had to watch it, even though I knew it would make me teary-eyed, and it did. It was the DVD of the 2005 cheerleading championships that my daughter’s squad won when she was a senior in high school. As a matter of fact I cried like I did three years ago.
Now before you think that I am a wussy boy crying over a cheering routine, let me say there was way more behind it than that. I’ve attended thousands of sporting events since I was old enough to form a sentence to ask to go to them. My family is full of all-state athletes, major college athletes, and like me most of them support the kids by going to as many events as we can. I’ve seen some tremendous performances from both my relatives and other kids, but I’ve never seen anyone set her site on a seemingly unreachable goal and do everything to achieve it like my daughter Taylor did in the course of one year.
At the 2004 championships, Taylor’s squad came in they came in forth, and the judges I think were generous. I’m no expert at judging cheering competitions but I know when you have two girls running into one another at full speed, that’s not a good thing. I knew her friends well enough to know they were not great athletes. I thought they lacked talent, but I guess my impression was jaded by their lack of dedication and enthusiasm. They were just very average, at best. Cheering is not even similar to when I was in high school. Cheerleaders are athletes – they work on tumbling, strength, stamina, and their bodies take a beating. The competitions take on not only the complexion of a dance recital, with all the primping and attentions to aesthetics, but have the hype and intensity of a football game. A couple hours after the 2004 competition we got home where I knew we would all be in front of the TV watching the replay. Our local stations do a great job covering the high school events. I just wanted to see my daughter on TV. Taylor grabbed a tape and recorded it. After it was over, she watched it again. A few hours later when I went to bed she was still watching it. Sunday morning I woke up to find her watching the tape again. Every few minutes she would drag me in the room and make me watch a portion, saying, “Do you see what that team did? Watch this part. They’re the best. We could do that if we worked at it.”
A month went by and every chance she had she was watching the winner’s routines, studying them; moving furniture, and making me watch her. I’m a supportive parent I think, but I had reached my limit of tolerance. I told her I had seen the tape 100 times and couldn’t bear any more. Over the next several months is where the real story lay. Taylor coached and pushed herself and the other girls on the squad. One girl had some family issues, the kind that cause kids to drop out of athletics, and Taylor helped her through those, keeping her mind focused. Beyond the normal practices she made the girls watch the tape over and over just has she had done. Then two months before the 2005 competition their best tumbler quit. It was kind of like if Tom Brady left the Patriots during the playoffs. Taylor was an OK tumbler but she knew they needed someone better. She encouraged a sophomore to take over that part of the routine, working with the girl and even prompting her mother to allow time for her to work on tumbling, and that her daughter could do it well. All the girls worked very hard, but I was pleasantly surprised at Taylor keeping focused on that goal with such intensity and dedication for an entire year. This was the same girl who, when she got a C in science told me, “Dad, that’s all that I HAVE to do to get in college. So I’m doing OK. I don’t need to get A’s all the time. All you need is a C average.” (Yes, smoke came out of my ears.)
A few weeks before the 2005 competition I was sure the girls would do their best, but there would be much better squads. The day of the competition I watched thinking they all were at least as good as the year before. Then came our squad and after a flawless routine I hide my face – I was crying embarrassingly knowing that they probably had won. I didn’t cry because of kids doing so well but because in an instant it hit me what their work had become. I’m sure there are stories every day in sports like that but this is one I had seen unfold firsthand. All the other parents were counting on me to take some good photos of the awards, and I guess I did but I can’t remember doing it.
And so I watched this DVD today, of one of my proudest moments as a parent and I really did wonder about how much support from friends and family means, and of how focus and hard work can get you where you want to be. That’s a point I make when I encourage kids into athletics because I think it’s a place where they can find that for themselves in an apparent way like no other discipline.
Then I saw I had dirty dishes in the sink and needed to vacuum too, but I thought that could wait until I felt more rambunctious. Maybe tomorrow... or Saturday.
