BECOMING A

CHEERLEADER
Repurposed MWA
Portfolio Project
MAKING THE TEAM
I’ve been cheering for almost my entire life. It has been the source of many
lessons, wins and losses.
 The beginning
I first began cheering for the YAFL team that my
mom was coaching at the time. I was 2 years old,
so I wasn’t allowed to be a part of the actual team.
I had to start out as a mascot until I was 6. I loved
the sport; I was always trying to copy the older
girls and cheer alongside them. I wore my
uniform wherever I went; I refused to take it off.
In the picture to the left, you can see me in my
uniform riding a horse. I just cheered at a football
game and went straight to my best friend’s
birthday party which was a petting zoo. I cheered with the team for one year
before my mom and her coaching partner decided to quit and change
directions. They decided to open up an Allstar cheer gym called Royal Cheer
Academy. I cheered there for about 6 years
before my mom and her partner sold the
cheer gym. I stopped cheering for 3 years in
middle school and focused on other things.

Royal Cheer Chapter:

Royal Cheer Academy is where I learned the

basics for cheer. I learned how to tumble,
stunt and be a part of a team. I got my
backhand spring the first year my mom
opened the gym. I got my skills one after the
other like clockwork. Since I was young, it
came very easy to me. That is, until my
standing tuck. I worked on this skill for what seemed like forever. I was
always super close but I never quite perfected it. It was always that one
obstacle that I never could move past.

We competed many times a year and were pretty successful. We even

eventually won a national competition at the Cardinal Stadium in Arizona!

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This was a great time in my life where I learned so much and made so many
friends. That is why it was such a sad time when my mom had to sell the gym.
My mom’s partners husband got an amazing job in Washington D.C. They just
couldn’t pass up. This meant we had to say goodbye to this chapter. It was a
huge part in our lives that we just had to abandon. But for some reason it felt
like this story wasn’t over.

On to the next…

After taking a few years off cheer, I was a little behind where I wanted
to be. High school cheer was coming up fast. In order for me to make the
team, I would have to get my standing tuck. I’ve always been pretty close to
the skill, but I had a lot of work to do. I could not tell you the number of hours
I spent in private lessons trying to get this skill. The entire year prior to
tryouts, I was practicing being able to land the skill in tryouts. I was getting
close to landing, but tryouts were quickly approaching. Cheering for the La
Cueva cheer team was something I looked forward to my entire childhood.
Cheering for YAFL, I knew that someday I would have to make the team.

Tryouts were the first week of school my freshman year. I was so

concerned with the idea about tryouts, I completely forgot I would be
starting high school. So, in order to prepare for tryouts, I upped the amount
of private lessons I was having in a week to two. So, tryouts were three
consecutive days. I had to balance my first week of high school, tumbling
lessons, and the stress of tryouts. My body was so exhausted. I didn’t know if
I could land my tuck during tryouts. I iced my body nonstop and ate as
healthy as I could.

The first day of try outs came. Each day of tryouts are scored for the
final end score to determine if you made the team. So, as a result, each day is
important. The first day went great! Day one was just the interview portion
which I am typically good at. Next day was performing the dance and cheer. I
picked them both up quickly and had no problems with this portion. And
finally, on the third day, it was time to do my standing tuck. I was so nervous
and so tired I had no idea what was going to happen. Each girl went down the

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line and did their skill. Finally, it was my turn. The moment I had been
preparing for, for an entire year. I take a breath and I throw my skill.

Nope, I did not land it. I actually landed on my face to be exact. And
they were nice enough to give me a second try, where I landed on my face a
second time. I was crushed. I knew there was no way I was going to make the
team. They were only taking 5 freshmen and at least 20 girls tried out. The
day of team announcements came so slow. The entire day dragged. Each
class, I watched the clock tick until it was time for them to post the teams.
Eventually 2:25pm came around. I rushed down to see the list. I pushed to
the front of the crowd who were also hopefully checking to see their names.
And there it is. I see my name on the page of 4 other girls who would later be
my best friends.

I made the team. It was a great feeling. But I was so confused. Why did
I make the team if I didn’t land my tuck? It was still a bit disappointing
because I wasn’t able to finish out my goal of landing my tuck in tryouts. How
did I score high enough to make the team? I later found out from the coaches
that I scored so high in the other aspects of the tryout, that it completely
made up for landing on my face. My new coach even told me I had the highest
score in the interview portion of the tryout. I learned a great lesson over the
course of the week. If you fall but get back up, you just might succeed!

During that first year of high school, in the first month to be exact. I
finally landed my standing tuck in practice. I was able to throw my standing
tuck in my first varsity competition that year. It was something that I always
had to work on during those four years and it never came easy. I would still
land on my face every now and again. That’s why it was so special when I was
able to land my tuck at my last competition of my high school career. At state
2019, my senior year, I threw my standing tuck 5 times during the course of
2 routines. This difficult skill would soon be the key that locked my spot onto
a division one college team my freshmen year of college. And yes, this time I
landed it!

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 Reflection

For my repurposed MWA I struggled with how to change my rhetorical

situation and genre. As I started typing, I still had no clue what I was going to
talk about. I first just started out with my story of starting cheer. The end
result just began to happen as I typed. I decided to go in the direction of a
memoir. My audience is fairly relative because it is just a fun story. You don’t
have to know much about cheer for it to make sense.

My MWA #1 was focused on explaining all of the aspects of cheer, so I

wanted to change it to something more relaxed and fun. The website was a
guide to learning all parts about cheer. I felt like it would be more
entertaining to tell a story that is important to me. By giving a memoir I felt
that it gave a closer look into an aspect of my life that is important to me. I
talked a lot about high school cheer in my website, but I didn’t say how hard
it was to get there. I felt like using this story was a good way to show a lot of
characteristics about me. I figured my classmates would be reading it, so I
tried to make my writing fun and lighthearted.

It took me a very long time to decide how I was going to rework my

MWA. Honestly, at first, I wasn’t too thrilled to be doing it. I felt like I had put
so much work into my website that I didn’t want to change it. But in the end,
it felt really nice to give such a personal story about me. With the reworked
MWA I was able to give a deeper look with how I got where I am today.

The hardest part of this assignment for me was coming up the new
genre. I stared at a blank screen for what seemed like forever. I decided to
just star typing. This valuable story just flowed out of me. It felt like it was a
very organic time to discuss this. So, after hammering my head about what I
was going to write, the story came very easily to me. After I finished my
website, I felt that I could have done better with it. I thought it was good, but
I knew I could do better. So, for this new MWA, my goal was to feel like I did
my 100% best. I felt like this assignment met all of the goals it was mint too. I
changed the rhetorical situation and genre entirely. I also feel like my writing

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has improved afar this as well. I ended up being very proud of the outcome of
this repurposed MWA.