It's Already Been Broughten!

Alright, April, I hate to admit that your public chastisement was actually a decent motivator, but whatever.  I did want to ask, though, how your other websites were going.  Gone for any good runs lately?  Procrastinate much?

 

Ok, onto the real post…

Several months ago I got an offer to work as an athletic trainer at a cheerleading competition.  I know, I know, my immediate response should have been, “Yeah, thanks, but no.”  I mean, I have nothing against cheerleaders.  I would never say they weren’t athletes, or call them ‘dancers gone retarded’ or anything.  I’m just not really into cheerleading.  Besides that, cheerleaders probably have more injuries than football and soccer combined.

But, times they are tough, and I needed the money, so I took the job.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  Wow.

So I naively thought that this competition would be fairly low-key – kind of like a wrestling tournament (which I also dislike covering), with a few different mats, teams competing on each.  I thought I would sit in a corner somewhere and hand out band-aids and ice, and then deal with major injuries on the mats. 

Um, no.  First of all, this competition was considered a ‘National Championship’ even though there were only teams from a few states.  And there were several different mats, but they were in the warm-up area.  The competition area was in fact a stage…like a 4 ft. tall stage.  It was like Bring It On.  The lights were out the entire time (except for the strobe lights, which were definitely on), and the music (a strenuous number of horrible remixes) was blaring so loud I could barely hear myself think.

I had blindly stumbled into big time competition cheerleading.  I wore a headset radio to communicate with the other staff members.  There was more make-up and hairspray in one building than you would find at a drag queen competition. It was all downhill from there.

How old were these kids?  The youngest were probably 5, and the oldest were college age.  Don’t worry, though, the hip gyrations were all top notch.  And, remember, the smaller they are, they higher you can throw them.

I doubt my heart rate dropped below 90 the entire time.  I dealt with at least 25 injuries over the 2 day period - multiple suspected concussions, suspected fractures, knocked out teeth, among other things.  The worst injury, by far, though involved 2 words I never thought I would hear, and never, ever wanted to hear:  Parent Team.

What?!?!

Seriously, you can’t just live vicariously through your children?  I mean, aren’t you doing that anyway?  Do you really need to get up on the stage and try to re-live the glory days, or, for some of you, invent the glory days?

And the thing is, if this was just a joke, or even just for fun, that would be one thing.  But these people were actually, seriously competing.  Like the judges judged them and gave them scores.  It was a for real competition.

Well one mother (who will remain nameless – because I don’t remember her name) got a little bit too into the routine and lost track of her boundaries…and jumped off the back of the stage.  Yeah, go ahead and re-read that sentence.  Better yet, I’ll type it again.  SHE JUMPED OFF THE BACK OF THE STAGE.  Are you kidding me?

Oh and in case you were wondering, there were no railings on the back of the stage because they weren’t aesthetically pleasing enough for the competition.  Yeah.

So she just jumped back and landed on both of her knees.  I won’t go into detail about what happened next, except to say that there was a large amount of moaning and screaming (while her team was finishing their routine).  It was similar to the sounds this lady made.

She ended up being ok.  No broken bones, amazingly.  I didn’t hear the about her follow up, but I’m guessing there was some ligament damage.

The moral of the story?  Avoid cheerleading competitions.  And if you can’t, ask for more money.