I Wish I’d Played Team Sports – Instead of Cheerleading

My younger son’s high school football team’s season is over now.  The team got off to a shaky start with two early losses, a lukewarm offense and several season-ending injuries.  But they worked together and won nine games in a row.  They lost in the playoff semi-finals – just one game short of the state championship game!

I never would have predicted this team would do so well.  But even I could see the improvement from game to game.  The offense gelled, the defense made plays and the team’s confidence grew.  They were having fun and growing closer as a team unit.

I don’t usually allow myself to say “I regret” this or that, and I’m not going to start now.

But from what I’ve witnessed from both of my sons, participation in team sports would have done me a lot of good in my career and life in general.  I swam and ran track before I reached high school but I think those particular sports have more individual and less team aspects to them – at least they did for me.

I was in almost every singing activity available but the closest I came to a team “sport” in high school was cheerleading.  Ten of us met every day after school for two hours to practice cheers, prepare weekly football pep rallies complete with humorous skits, make weekly locker flyers, etc.   We had to get along and work closely together to get everything done, and we did.

Cheerleading was a great team experience but it’s different from sports because our performance wasn’t officially judged or measured. We didn’t have a score at the end of a game or a record at the end of the season.  We didn’t have the entire town counting on us to win.

Continue reading this post on Kathi Prien’s blog, Breaking 50