Project 2 writing similar to “Varsity”
It was an early February morning to be called to practice for. It was competition season so we had to train our bodies hard to be the next world champion. Our practice wear was purple, black, and white with fake diamonds all over. It was always scratchy in the winter time. The heat generators were on and roaring as my team and I walked into the gym complex. After we warmed up our tumbling and stunts, we immediately went into running our routine fullout. Most of us were 15 on the team, except the rookie, Alyssa, who was 12. She did not have all her skills perfected yet so she kept screwing up the attempt to hit 0 (no deductions). She was always the easy one to yell at and get our anger on. She would never talk back just like any rookie would never have attitude towards the seniority of the team. We constantly reassured her how shitty she was at her job in the routine and how selfish we was to even consider not doing her job. We would say Do you think we want you to be on this world famous team when all you do is mess up? I always felt bad being hard on her but when I was on a senior team, I got hammered just the way she did. On every team I have been on, the coaches always assumed that the older girls were the leaders, but I always knew that was not how it goes.
Th next day, we came in to practice and Alyssa looked like she had had enough of our bull. I would not say it was that it was “bullying”, it was a way of expression to get her mad at herself and try harder. This time her mom was in then gym like she was observing how we treated her. I thought this was stupid because if she wants to be on a senior team, she need to step up and grow some balls. As the practice went on, we noticed that she was trying even less to be anything more then trying to achieve something on this team. She was not being sharp, she was being the laziest I have ever seen her be. I knew that she was trying to get us in trouble. I laid off of her that practice but other girls did not notice her mom being present. I hoped that her mother would understand why she was going home bawling every day after cheer practice, but of course she did what a mother would do and stood up for her baby. After practice was over, I saw her mother bring our coaches into the meeting room. They were in there for a while. Meanwhile, my team and I gossiped of how annoying Alyssa and her mom is. The whole time they had the meeting, Alyssa was sitting alone hopefully thinking about how she does not bring anything to the team.
As Alyssa's mom walked out of the meeting room with he coaches, she looked at the team with the most evil eyed smirk I have ever seen. The coaches called the team over and they immediately started shaming us of all the horrible name calling we did to Alyssa. Some of us laughed and others had no expression. They told us how disrespectful and immature we were to be putting one our teammates down. In my head i’m like… Why don’t the coaches look at the source of the problem instead of telling us how awful teammates we are. With my bold and hardheaded self, I raised my hand and suggested can we all explain why we were acting out?. Of course I got backlash form the coaches but other girls agreed. We stated talking about how we felt as a team with Alyssa not trying and being soft all the time. We expressed how we felt and it all came down to one solution. If Alyssa does not start doing her job, we will make her an alternate and replace her with someone more accountable.
Later that week, we ended up keeping her because she showed how much effort she could apply to the team. She ended up hitting her stunts and making us all impressed. I started to ask myself If us teammates were not holding her accountable for her mistakes, would she ever have woken up? To this day, I believe that being hard on her made her the cheerleader she is today.
