From a young age I watched the cheerleaders at football games in incredible admiration. All of the girls- in their sleek uniforms with pompoms in colors representing their school- captured my attention. I longed to be in their shoes one day, and I looked up to them. The cheerleaders claimed the spot role model to me for the majority of my childhood. I never realized that years into the future I would fill their shoes, and carry the responsibility of being the person little girls looked up to. I didn’t know back then I would come the tremendously frightening and honoring understanding of how much I could influence a young person’s life. In our town there is a youth football program we have come to know as “Cadiz Biddy Football.” They start in August and play four teams two times each, then go into playoffs to see who gets to compete in the “Superbowl”. Along with the football program is a cheerleading program. Girls third through sixth grade sign up every year to cheer for the four quarters of every football game, along with doing a routine to entertain fans at halftime. I began cheering for this program in the third grade. I remember the pride I felt while wearing my Cardinal uniform (that was five years old, smelled bad, and was three sizes too big for me.) Each year I worked hard to …show more content…
At that time there was a head coach and I served as the assistant. Halfway through the season the coach stepped down putting me in charge of forty girls not that much younger than I. It was difficult to gain respect from the older girls because they had cheered with me the year prior, and saw me at the same level as them. I knew I had what it took to be a good coach for all of these girls, but I had to work hard to prove that to them, and that’s exactly what I did. I was confident and believed in myself enough that they began to look at me as an authority figure, and we had a successful