Chapter 9: Accidents Happen

Right when the pyramid was complete the top girl unfurled a Texas flag. The wind came up blowing the flag out straight which was impressive but also caused the top girl to fall taking the whole group down in a pile. As a result the top girl sprained her ankle and had to be carried off the field. I rushed over to her to see how bad it was. She was in quite a bit of pain so we had the paramedics take a look at her. They pronounced there was no fracture and she should stay off that leg for a few days. They wrapped her ankle with an ace bandage and left her. This left us one short but the other seven did an admirable job while their squad-mate warmed the bench. The girl's mom came out to be with her and do what she could to help.

Well, the game was very close but we lost by a one point margin. The entire opposing cheerleader squad came over to wish our injured girl well. We all loaded back on the buses for the somber trip home. When we arrived at the school we were met by some more parents. I called our group together and filled them in on how the game went. I also let them know we will have to decide if we were going to do the pyramid any more. The girls moaned and complained but I said that it was out until we decided otherwise. We all left the school and headed home.

Our injured girl healed quite fast and was back at her place on the squad in short order. The squad held a meeting to elect a captain for this school year. They all wrote names on a slip of paper and put them in an envelope. Normally the coach gets to count the ballots but since my daughter was on the squad I deferred to one of the teachers to do the count. It was a tense moment while she counted but she came over to me and handed the envelope to me to announce the results.

When I read the results my chest puffed out and I got a big grin on my face as I announced that it was unanimous that Kim had won. She ran around and gave each and every one of the girls a bug hug and a thank you. Boy she is going to be hard to live with for the rest of the year. But then I guess she deserved to be captain since it was through her efforts that there even was a cheerleader program this year.

So it turns out that I got persuaded to coach the squad for next year. It seems the parents and school board were quite pleased with my performance with the squad. My girls were getting better and better to the point that they won the regional cheerleading competition and were to go to the state competition in Dallas. This is an expensive undertaking so I had the girls organize a fund raiser to get some cash to cover expenses. They had bake sales, raffles and even did some door to door collections. I had told them that I would match whatever they raised. A couple of the girls were quite industrious and hit up a few local businesses. It turns out they got more than what we needed so with my matching contribution we were going in style. We rented a Greyhound bus for the trip to Big D and rented rooms at a large motel for the weekend.