Life is a Tumble Aaliyah K. Wyman When you move to a new town, what do you expect? You expect to be an outcast because everyone has their friend groups already and you won’t be included at games, lunch tables or being picked to play a game in gym class. That happened to me when I started high school. I moved to Andover, MA right before my freshman year and I was so nervous. I kept thinking to myself that I wouldn’t make friends and everyone would think I’m weird. I ended up completely isolating myself in my room until the first day of school. After two months at my new school, I decided to try out for basketball cheer. That winter my mom had started to work longer hours at work. She couldn’t drive me back to school, so I stayed and did my math homework in the cafeteria until 5pm. I started walking into the gym and my heart was racing. We got into lines, started to stretch and then ran laps. I kept looking around and watching all the other girls talk to one another. I felt like an imposter. I felt like none of the other girls would like me because I was different. I felt like I didn’t belong. They were all having a good time and giggling about random things and I was just standing there alone. Suddenly, I saw a separate group of girls walk away and I asked them why they had left the group. Someone responded and said, “That’s tryouts for hockey cheer.” I immediately got excited because I had never heard of such a thing and was eager to find out more about it. I was intrigued to try something new and try to make new friends because it was clear to me that nobody in basketball cheer wanted new friends. I left basketball cheer tryouts and tried out for hockey cheer instead. Three days of tryouts had passed. The next day I got the alert that I had made the team, and I was so happy! I ran through the apartment, yelling to my mom and siblings that I’d made the team! Eventually, a year had passed, it was my sophomore year and I was still doing hockey cheer. At our last practice, my coach, Christine, and my mom were badgering me about trying out next month for football cheer for the following year and telling me that I should do it. At the time, I was still cautious about what the other girls would think about me, so I decided to try out. A month later, it was a rough three days, but I pushed through my fears and succeeded. I
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eventually got the email from our coach, Marisa, that I got accepted into the junior varsity team. The next couple of weeks, we had summer training. The first day was fun, but it went downhill after that. We started right away with putting the routine together for competition and Marisa started forming each stunt group and deciding where everyone had to be standing before performing the stunt. While I was making sure I was doing the stunt right when practicing, there was always someone telling me what to do and I got really frustrated. I would be taken out of my original spots and moved somewhere else and have to learn new moves over and over again. I had to learn the layout of the new spot I was in everytime. Marisa wouldn’t listen or see that I was struggling and that the other girls weren’t treating me right. I tried talking to them, but they just ignored me. They were only thinking about themselves and what they should do in the routine. I had my own ideas, but never got the chance to tell anyone because everyone else’s ideas were top priority. At that point, everyone was trying to take control of the team. The captains had us run through the routine a couple of times, but then people kept messing up or coming up with something different to do instead. When Marisa came back and saw everyone fighting, she started to yell. She got so upset that she said we weren’t going to compete if we didn’t start acting like a team. In that moment, I wanted to scream because I hadn’t done anything wrong, I listened to the captains and did the routine every time. I didn’t argue. It was my junior year and everything was falling apart. In hockey cheer, we got new recruits because all the seniors were gone. There were three juniors, including myself, that were the oldest and could be a captain this year. There was no discussion, or debate on who was captain. The other two girls got it and I was stuck on the side lines with the freshman. I started to feel left out again. I didn’t understand why there couldn’t have been three captains because I was very helpful when the girls needed help and they weren’t there to help. I still had fun with the girls and at the games, but I felt like I was put at the kids table at a birthday party even though I’m 16 years old. By the end of the season, COVID-19 hit and our last game and banquet got cancelled.
