Getting into the spirit

    Recently, I decided to fulfil one of my childhood dreams and become a cheerleader.
    I know every little girl out there who has watched Bring It On, Saved by the Bell, the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie or owned a cheerleading Courtney Skipper doll, wishes they were in my shoes.
    Trust me, if I wasn’t me, I would be jealous, too.
    Although my cheerleading background is limited, I was ready to find out what it would take to make the team . . . if I were 17 again.
    Obviously, at 27 my skills were bound to be a bit rusty and my cheers slightly out of date. However, I figured if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.
    As I walked into the gym and saw all of the other girls touching their toes, doing their laps around the gym and practising their high kicks, I thought to myself “Lyndsay, you can do this.”
    Wow, was I deluding myself. I can’t touch my toes.
    Not only that, these young men and women were tossing each other in the air, cheering, clapping and spinning faster than I could say “Vanier” and doing it all without skipping a beat.
    At first I just sat and watched as the 34 cheerleaders practised their game cheers. Was it a step to the right, then a step to the left, a v-shaped arm movement, some clapping, stepping and wiggling? I don’t know, quite frankly they lost me at one, two, three.
    However, they had my attention with the enthusiasm and energy that filled the room. It was amazing.
    They even had me, a former Central Cyclone, cheering “go VCI” — silently of course — as I watched them go through cheer after cheer.
    The confidence and team spirit, which had the Vanier gymnasium walls busting at the seams, made me wish more high schools had cheerleaders when I was a student.
    After the team practised its cheers, it was time to move on to stunts.
    Within minutes of pairing off into groups of four and five, girls were flying through the air and balancing on their teammates’ hands.