My hope, for other parents, is for their children to find a team.
Not just to join, but to belong. To embrace a common goal, commit together to put in the work, accept the failures as opportunities for improvements, overcome struggles and setbacks and agree that everyone giving full effort is the reward. That is the hope. An added bonus is the chance to celebrate success.
Those sentences are a slightly better organized version of the thoughts rattling around my brain during one of the weekend’s drives back from Grossinger Motors Arena in Normal, Ill., where my son’s cheerleading team finished in ninth place at the state finals. Winning is wonderful, as I recall from coaching the same kid to a Little League championship about six years ago, but as much fun as we had with those players and families, there is something different and special about watching a team truly come together and compete for each other. The trophy becomes secondary at best.
It doesn’t need to be a sports team or even a competition. It could be the cast of a musical or — like it was for me in high school — a newsroom or marching band. The important thing is reaching the tipping point from individual members doing their best to a broad understanding that true success means taking each step together.
Crossing that threshold might be easier to recognize in the context of coed cheer. Beyond just the lines of boys and girls, there are potential age divisions (do all the seniors form an exclusive circle?), fragmentation by club or private coach, floor members and alternates, the able and the injured, the longtime varsity members and those who finally eked onto the squad — and that’s all before the potential of any outside teenager drama spilling into the precious practice minutes. You can only see meaningful progress from grinding out a routine, eight-count by eight-count, day after day, if the whole group evenly bears the burden.
To be clear, I don’t actually know these things myself. I have two whole seasons as a cheer dad under my belt and am still framing all conversations in terms of baseball. (I told the kid watching a routine is like when he came up with the bases loaded and also had to take the mound but if all 85 pitches happened in about 240 seconds.) But I also basically appointed myself team photographer, which means time on the football sidelines but more importantly the moments right before and after each competition when emotions are highest, guards are lowest and underneath all the sequins, makeup, muscles and hairspray are a bunch of teenagers. They have math tests, curfews, essays, learner’s permits, boyfriends and girlfriends, nagging injuries and contagious illnesses. That hopefully each of them will one day have rich lives of far more significance than one cheer routine doesn’t change the perceived importance of what they endeavor to accomplish in that moment, and even if I cannot tell the difference between a drop down and a full down (or even be sure either of those are accurate terms) that type of knowledge is not required to understand when athletes and coaches have transcended me to become we.
From a sport-specific perspective, the observed turning point was a midseason competition that didn’t go as planned. Dropped stunts, preventable mistakes and athletes leaving the floor looking for either answers, comfort or perhaps blame. But there was the head coach, refusing to let heads hang. It was admonishment, to a point, but where others sensed failure, she observed success: no one quit. As soon as something missed, the entire group immediately focused on making the next thing hit. And the next thing. And so on and so forth such that even though these things take fewer than five minutes, coach had seen a full progression of maturity.
She may not, in that moment, have suspected where all this might lead. My speculation there is rooted in the look on the same coach’s face in the same gym two weeks later at the sectional meet in which only five schools would qualify for a trip downstate. Gone was the confidence of what that first attempt had fostered — a season-best showing at the conference meet — supplanted by legitimate concern the road might well end sooner than anyone hoped to exit for a second straight season.
Having already spoiled the final outcome, it’s enough to say the news was good that Saturday night. Fifth place by fractions of a point sufficed. Advancing further by finishing 10th out of 25 at the state preliminaries was equally shocking. As much as people wanted to believe in possibilities, as much as cheerleading is about flying and trust, there is wisdom in remaining grounded.
But again, the raucous joy of those unexpected advancement celebrations is the bonus. The collective action itself was a victory. The visual and physical contact after each routine, no longer limited to pre-existing friendships. The sidelined captain smiling as big and bright as anyone when pointing out success during the video review. Tending to each other’s physical and emotional scars. The traveling party of athletes, administrators, coaches and parents expanding from pockets of people to a big orange and black blob with a shared hope.
It perhaps sounds trite. Having all the teammates write supportive notes to one another is in many cases just another homework assignment. But those in the orbit sensed the reality, that this group was different, a team committed to itself and the sport to an uncommon degree. Not unprecedented or unique to the sport or the school, but meaningful to those competitors nonetheless. Writing about it almost seems foolish because there is no rational way to explain how something so clearly intangible was also so undeniably evident.
Which is why this all goes beyond cheerleading or any sport. No one needs those specific things to belong. But that sense, that knowing in your bones you are truly seen and accepted, passes from something that can be clinically understood to a calm that must be felt. This isn’t a band of brothers, bond for life type of thing. We’re not planning to rent groomsmen tuxedoes for a dozen future weddings. It’s a season of high school sports, one already etched in family lore, but impermanent in a way that only enhances the emotion.
It's all why one dad with a camera and a keyboard spent the better part of two weeks on the emotional brink. Once I came to understand exactly why how deeply I wanted this particular group to experience the results of their dedication, it began to feel I was rooting for each of them as if they were my own child. (I only hugged my actual son, though, fist bumps and “good jobs” for all the others. Don’t wanna be weird.) But also I wasn’t prepared to receive congratulations and compliments, either on behalf of the kid for his athletic endeavors or as a parent for his character. Exacerbating that experience was following the request to solicit supportive notes from friends and family. This was entirely self-inflicted, but friends, when you’re already given to watering eyes, your defenses are most susceptible to a cheerful email from a third-grade teacher who remembers and appreciates your son almost eight years after leaving her classroom. It’s difficult enough to hope for a successful featured tumbling pass without also considering all the important people who embedded fragments of themselves in one of the people you love most in the world. I didn’t even have time to reflect on the journey from “collapsed lung in the neonatal intensive care unit” to “throwing girls aloft, catching them by their feet and hoisting them overhead” but perhaps we can save that pondering for the 17th birthday in a few weeks.
Max and his flyer, Scarlett, during the preliminary state competition Feb. 7, 2025.
I haven’t even looked at all the pictures yet. This is largely because I never quite solved for the arena lighting conditions so the quality is below expectations, and somewhat owing to snapping about a thousand frames that covered maybe 30 minutes of real life across two days. But also just writing about the experience is proving a heavy lift. This is either due to lingering brain fog from driving and familial logistics, or because I’m just not ready for it to be over, to accept that group will never again perform and compete under those conditions.
But that’s also the point. You build up to an event, you pour everything you have into that experience and then you go forward, embracing the reality that life is full of moments, big and small, and while those happenings don’t all require the same investment, each affords a chance to show the world the kind of person you hope to be, and often the most meaningful occur when no one is watching.
The lights dim, the sounds fade, someone locks the doors and makes everyone go home. Being able to take that journey with heads held high, knowing the lessons learned and the feeling of acceptance … that stays forever. You found your team. You cooperated. You trusted and persevered. You belonged.
The routine started with the squad yelling: “Who? Who are we?!?”
Now they know, and they will always remember providing the answer.
