Finding My Normal

Ch 17: Cheer Hell

While browsing around Instagram I found this meme about dieting.  It was funny, but I couldn't relate to it, because I've never been on a diet.  However, the feelings being portrayed in the meme are exactly what I've been feeling the last couple days of cheer boot camp:

Cheer Boot camp with Jade is like riding a bike.  Except the bike is on fire.  The ground is on fire.  Everything is on fire, because you're in hell.

I swear Jade is the devil incarnate.  This "boot camp"  is more of a "Do Whatever Jade Says Camp".  All of Thursday she made us run the bleachers...up and down, up and down, up and down.  During the entire 2 hours of boot camp!!  She called it "conditioning"; I called it torture.  Anyone who stopped to rest or threw up was kicked out and disqualified from trying out.  

Jade and her two lackeys Tara and Sara were exempt because they were on the team last year.  Friday rolled around and she made us repeat jump after jump for the entire two hours.  Pikes, herkies, toe touches, pencil jumps, double hooks, hurdles and any combination of them all.  

I have yet to learn a single cheer at this so called bootcamp and it's aggravating!!  But I have to do this for my assignment.  Rocky, Jay, Jade, North and Silas are all potential recruits; being a cheerleader will allow me to get closer to them to see what qualifications they have.  Jade already has a list going of qualities—loud, conceited, athletic, domineering, rude, arrogant the list stops there...at the moment she'll be able to join the Academy when hell freezes over.

It's Saturday and the last day of Cheer bootcamp.  We are required to get to school at 8am and learn the group routine and the individual routine for the auditions.  Then we have to perform that routine in front of Jade, Tara, Sara and the entire football team at 6pm.  Jade said the team will be there to give a more realistic game-like atmosphere.  I think she's just trying to embarrass us.

My mom drops me off at the field entrance and I race over to the grassy spot we've been practicing on.  As I pass by the football players practicing during their last day of Hell Week I see Silas waving at me.  I wave back and notice North turns around probably wondering who Silas is waving at.  Once he spots me he gives me a glare and turns back around to focus on practice.  Why is he always glaring at me?

When I make it over to the cheer spot I notice there are only about 15 girls left.  We started this bootcamp with over 40!  I guess Jade was just too much for them.

Jade makes Tara demonstrate the individual routine we need to learn and it's pretty straight forward.

S-P-I-R-I-T, spirit!

Hey, let us hear it!

Gonna high gear it!

'Cause we've got spirit!

While doing claps and high v's and a toe touch at the end.

The group routine is not as easy.  Jade puts us into formation and starts playing the music we have to dance to.  It's a mash up of a bunch popular songs I've heard on the radio highlighted with sound effects like bells, whistles and explosions.

We start off with a stunt and since I'm the smallest I get volunteered as tribute— I mean flyer!  We learn the stunt fast and I don't have any time to be afraid because Jade jumps right into the dance steps.  They are fast paced and intricate and Jade is stopping for no one.  I feel like she doesn't want anyone to make the team.  She's going through this so fast none of us will learn it.