Cheer Tryouts by Alexandra

Cheer Tryouts by Alexandra - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

Not everybody succeeds in what they do. You don’t get what you want, right when you want it. Sometimes you have to work harder for it. We all learn this lesson at different stages in our lives. Some of us learn it when we are young, while others learn it when they are older. For me, it was the end of my eighth grade year.
In the town I grew up in, Joplin Missouri, there was a program that little girls could join if they wanted to cheer. The program was called J.Y.C.A. It stood for Joplin Youth Cheerleading Association. Any little girl could be a part of it, no skill level needed. All that they had to do was pay a price, and they were put into a squad with other girls their same age. It ranged from third through sixth grade. After you aged out of that, you could try out for middle school cheer. I decided to only cheer my eighth grade year. Not many girls wanted to be on the squad that year, so everyone that tried out for a spot, made it. During that year, I decided to start taking private lessons at a local gym to improve my skill. I did that for two years.
By the end of my eighth grade year, there were tryouts for freshman cheer at the high school. I knew that I was going to try out. It was what I was working so hard for. I went to lessons for a year now, trying to improve my skill. The day of tryouts came, and the list of cheerleaders for the next year were emailed to everyone that tried out, my name wasn’t on that list. I broke down. All I wanted at this point was to be a cheerleader all four years of my high school career, and now that would never happen.
I continued to go to private lessons at the gym to improve. I decided I was going to tryout for my sophomore year. I pushed myself harder to be better than I had before. I moved my lessons from 30 minutes a week to an hour a week. I had learned that if it was something that I really wanted, I had to work really hard for it. Tryouts came for the next year. I put all of my effort into the five minutes that would decide what my next year would be like. The list came out that night, just like the previous year, but the only difference was that my name was on it this time.
I still worked as hard as I could for the next year, because I knew that the varsity coach would be watching. She was watching, and the impression I made and the skill I showed at tryouts the next year helped my make it on the squad for my junior year. By the time that tryouts came for my senior year, it was almost a given that anyone that made the squad their junior year would make it their senior year. That wasn’t guaranteed, so I still tried my hardest, and the nerves where still there. I not only made the cheerleading squad for the past three years, but I was also selected to be one of three captains for my senior year. That taught me that if I try hard enough for something that I want, even if it doesn’t come right away, I could still make it happen. I went from not making the squad my freshman year to being one of three captains for my senior year.