Inspired

Well, not going to lie, the cheerleading competition didn't go well. We came 6th out of 7 and Co-Ed had an injury in the warm up arena meaning they got last place... Oh well. We knew we were nowhere near the standard needed to win and now we're all pumped for April! We have a LOT to work on. Half the squad can't tumble properly, our stunts are lack lustre, we have NO attitude and our dances are very simple and look crap half the time.

The biggest differences I noticed though between us and the other teams was that a) most of them are from big universities, and have teams of 25+ - we scrape the 20 person mark when no-one's injured and b) a lot of them keep the same squad year after year and therefore start practicing and choreographing their routines from September when they return after summer holidays. We started practicing and learning our routine in November/December, so in terms of time difference, we're about three months behind them in practice time.

I'm uploading a video of the routine to FaceBook for my coaches to view but tbh I'm very reluctant to release it into the public domain via YouTube as I'm so aware how poor it really is! Maybe comment if you'd like to see it and I'll share the link with you. I do have some other videos of other teams stunting which is pretty cool though so I'll put them on my new YouTube channel - TheBangorDragon

The inspired title? Well, one team competing there yesterday was called Unity. They're the equivalent of a Varsity team I think? They all used to be university cheerleaders/gymnasts - or pretty much all of them did - and then they were hand picked from the entire country to form the super group. They. Are. AMAZING. Here's their stunt routine from two years ago; bearing in mind they were so much better than this yesterday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXfd6tBzees

In other news, I've been feeling really sick recently. My boyfriend has been staying and he's been down with a heavy cold over the last few weeks which is finally getting better so hopefully it's just that. I'm planning to start pom dance on Tuesdays now I no longer cheer at basketball games. Tomorrow I'm going to the gym after my 11am lecture and going to do some serious working out, I need to be fitter, thinner and have more muscle by April so I can really put the stunts up and hold them there.

Favourite picture from yesterday: