Aaliyah Wyman

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 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.

Before I moved to Andover, I did cheerleading from the ages of 5 to 12 in Medford, MA. My mom got me into it because she didn’t want me stuck in the house everyday not enjoying life. After the first season I fell in love with cheer. I loved showing my spirit, cheering on the boys, while tumbling and stunting. As a bonus, I got to hang out with my friends. We would hangout before and after games because I lived right next to the field we had our games in. I had such an amazing experience with bonding and trusting exercises with my teammates and coaches, that I thought it would be the same in Andover. I didn’t want to believe all the superstitions about Andover, that they’re all just rich, white people who only care about themselves and their “kind.” But I gave them too much credit because that’s who they were and still are. The whole experience wasn’t what I wanted at all. I thought we would all have a great season, I would’ve made new friends, and we would have placed in the competition. I wanted to be a part of something special because looking back when I was part of the Medford Mustangs, I made amazing friends from cheer and I still talk to them to this day. I loved making routines with them and going to competitions. Even though we had to be up at around 7am in the morning, we still had a blast at competitions. However, it wasn’t anything like that. I ended up crying multiple times because I was thrown around like garbage and wasn’t taken seriously. You might think I’m overexaggerating, but I never felt so discluded, even when I was in the room, or the gym, with them for hours.

We were supposed to be a team, but we weren’t at all. I wasn’t included when I should’ve been. I wasn’t updated on practices being rescheduled, and times for games until the last minute because I wasn’t part of the text chain, just because of what type of phone I had at the time. The only difference between football and hockey cheer is the coaches. At least, Christine communicated with me. That’s the one thing Marisa wasn’t good at. I was just blown away by how the team acted as a whole and how Marisa handled it. I admit that sometimes I had an attitude, but I never said anything to anyone’s faces or to Marisa. By the end of the football cheer season, everything was starting to crumble down. Two girls got injured and couldn’t perform at the competition. One broke her finger after falling in the shower, and the other girl got a major concussion from someone falling on them from a stunt. Another girl got dropped from a stunt and had to use crutches until a couple days before the competition, but couldn’t do anything we had originally planned. I had been moved at least three times in the routine because of the two of the girls who couldn’t be in the competition.

The day of the competition, I was so nervous and didn’t think I could do it. My family and my best friend, Angelina, came to cheer me on, but all I could think about was failing. When we got there, we put all our stuff on the tables in the back before we went to practice our routine before our actual performance. Everything was going fine, we took pictures, then Marisa made us practice our tumbling, even though I tried warning her that I shouldn’t. When I did cheer in Medford I learned that it was better for me to not practice beforehand because I had this thing where the first time is always gonna be perfect, and I’ve stood by that since. My coaches understood that and in the end, we placed 1st. Marisa didn’t understand and told me to do it and I landed it perfectly. We practiced the whole routine after and then we went in line to perform. Everyone was taking pics again and I was still pretty nervous and stressed about everything. I saw everyone in the stands and I was regretting everything leading up to that moment. Everything bad that happened and I thought would happen was rumbling in my stomach. The routine was changed multiple times and I wasn’t feeling confident about my back-handspring. As expected, one of the stunts fell and instead of landing the back-handspring, I fell on my face. The whole routine was messy and we ended up getting last place. In my opinion, we deserved last place because nothing about our routine was great or pristine. The routine was already used in early years, and not once did Marisa even stop to think, “Maybe we should come up with something brand new!?’’ Maybe in the end, things might have ended differently. If people were more inclusive, it would’ve been a great season!

We finished the routine and everyone was so disappointed. I walked to the stands and saw Angelina and my family and they started congratulating me. I just denied everything that had happened because if I hadn’t I would have balled my eyes out. All I wanted to do was go home, but we were required to take the team bus home. When we got back to the school, I left the school as soon as possible. I got home and cried for hours about everything. Everyone was trying to cheer me up, but I couldn’t bear to anyone change the way I was feeling; anger, sadness and regret. After processing what went down that day, I learned that you shouldn’t let others drag you down. I could’ve quit the team at any time, but I didn’t because I didn’t let anyone stop me from enjoying what I love. Cheerleading has always has been part of my life and if anyone thinks they’re gonna take that away, that’d be wrong. Yes, I was mistreated and cried multiple times because of what had happened in cheerleading, but it was because of the people, not the sport. I moved on with my life and I’m still continuing cheerleading in college.

Aaliyah Wyman is a Graphic Design major. An interesting fact about them is that they have two younger sisters