Throwback Tuesday: OHS Cheer

Are you ready for some hilarity? Because just writing this, I'm laughing profusely.

Confession: I was a cheerleader in high school. I say that as if I'm embarrassed, but I'm not really at all.

We were quite good, actually. I was on my high school's main squad for two years (sophomore and junior year) and we won all of the competitions we entered for those years. In fact, although our stunts (anytime someone is off the ground) have fallen before, no stunt group that I've been a part of has ever fallen in competition. That's a long way to say that, well, we rocked.

(I don't own a scanner so these are all photographs of pictures; I apologize in advance.)

My two best friends, Shannon (the blonde) and Jenn (brunette) at cheer camp. Yes, there's such thing as cheer camp!

Cheer camp was always a lot of fun, but always a lot of work too. To prepare for camp (and the upcoming school year), we would have two-a-day practices. We'd get up early, have to run a mile and a half, then do an hour of cheer calisthenics (leg lifts, kicks, jumps, pushups, situps, etc.). It'd be another full hour or so of cheers and chants, before we got a lunch break. Then, the afternoon session involved dance, more cheers, and stunts, with a weight workout three times a week. Again, we were hardcore...

But it was worth every sore muscle.

We were once asked to be on Seattle Q13 News and performed flawlessly in their teeny, tiny studio. We're basically famous.

We attended multiple competitions a year and always rocked them. I can't remember ever getting under 1st place, but you know, we're awesome.

Jenn's younger brother, Andrew, put together an amazing video together of our junior year squad. It's pretty long, but if you jump around, you can see full competition routines at the end.

It's no Texas cheer (only three people on our squad were gymnasts at a young age, but we all had to learn some sort of tumbling), but it was a blast of a time.

Kind of makes me miss two-a-days. But only kind of.