Q&A Forum - Question #1

Question #1 comes from a loyal and avid reader.  Jo asks:  Why did you give up cheerleading and how the heck did you end up in an office!

I will preface my response by saying, I absolutely loved cheerleading and that leaving the sport was a very difficult decision.  In addition to being a national individual cheering champion, I also lettered twice in cheerleading in highschool.  While in highschool, I also had the honor of being a Calgary Stampeders CFL Cheerleader (my highschool coach was given the job of coaching and was able to drive me to the city to cheer, otherwise this opportunity would have never existed for me) and being a Stamps Cheerteam Member also drove my decision to go to the University of Calgary (even though I could have gone anywhere as I was accepted at all of the Universities I applied to.)

After my second year of cheering for the Stampeders, the football club decided that collegiate cheering was not the route they wanted to go (in layman terms, collegiate cheering is the athletic cheering, not the dance teams that you see now) and I am not a dancer, so I had to decide to not try out the following year.  From there, my Stamps coach started up the University of Calgary Cheerteam and I joined that and at the same time, I started coaching at a large city of Calgary Highschool. 

The UofC Cheerteam did not last very long, infact, I can't even recall if we cheered a game.  The coach, was exceedingly frustrated that she could not recruit more guys for stunts and decided that she wanted to try turning it into a dance squad.  Again, as above, I am not a dancer and that is not where my passion lies, so when asked if I would stay on the team if they switched formats, I said that I wouldn't and eventually that team folded.

Fast forward two years and I am now coaching the Uof C cheerteam.  In addition to coaching I was also able to cheer at the same time.  I wrote articles on cheer technique that were published in a national cheer magazine (now defunct) and was responsible for some of the "laws of cheering" which recognized safety in a sport that until the mid 90's had very little regulation.

So what happened?  Interest in cheering at UofC disappeared when the support of the university did.  Girls did not want to fundraise for their own uniforms and as such the team disbanded.  Teachers in highschools did not want to spend any of their time after school supervising cheerteams and those that had cheerteams weren't interested in having an assistant coach. 

But that was only part of it.  I think somewhere along the way, I got tired of hoping that people would change, that people would view cheerleading as a sport and that minds would open.  I was tired of telling 14 year-olds that they couldn't smoke in their uniform, that being drunk at the top of a stunt was dangerous, tired of begging schools for dollars that weren't there.  In short, the thing I loved more than anything in the world became work, because I couldn't understand how to share my passion with others and have them agree.  I hung up my skirt and have never looked back, other than to think fondly of those good days and I still miss them.

To answer how I ended up in an office - well, I'm sure i would have ended up here eventually.  But I never grew up with stars in my eyes.  My father was a hardworking man and I grew up believing that you do the job that pays the bills and you start paying bills as soon as you leave school.  So I got a job and that's what I did.  I often ask myself why I didn't choose differently, ie, go to Banff and work a waitressing job for a year, go to Australia, bum around Europe, instead I chose the path of least resistance, started working at a young age and just became successful doing what I do.   But being in an office isn't really my passion.  It pays the bills.  What I would really like to do someday - someday - is be a motivational speaker, someone who can help facilitate change in others, sort of a life coach, maybe...?

Thanks for asking!