Two of a kind: A UCLA Bruins Love Story

part one

The stadium was bursting with people as the mark of the first official game of the season was upon us. Crowds filled the stadium anxious to get seats to tonight's opening game.

I watched the variety of blue and yellow shades fill the stadium. I anxiously tugged on the strapless cheerleading outfit. It was painted a sea blue color in the front with a bright yellow in the back.

I kept shifting my focus between the crowd and the field as I felt the tension build up. As a freshman, it was my first game meaning my first time performing for a crowd of around 90,000.

I felt my skin starting to crawl, it felt as if there were hundreds of spiders scurrying throughout my entire body.

"Caitlyn! Caity!" I heard a voice calling for me on the other side of the field. I followed the voice as I realized the voice was coming from a girl around my height with an identical looking outfit to mine. I couldn't quite fit a name to the face but when I did, I realized it was Natalie Manning. She was a junior, and the cheerleading captain.

I let go of my anxious thoughts as I jogged across the field catching up with her.

"I'm here" I exclaimed, slightly out of breath.

"Good. Now let's get warm up started" She replied with a hint of annoyance in her eyes. I ignored it however as I tried to stay as focused as possible upon the cheers during todays game.

Natalie called for another junior on the team and her best friend, April to lead the stretching. It was the same routine each day, arms then legs.

We started with arms as we stretched them for a count of 15 seconds both in front and behind our backs. I was starting to feel a lot calmer now as we shifted toward legs. We each held our leg up for a count of 15 seconds, we started with our right leg first.

Midway through however, we were distracted by the football team as they came out onto the other side of the field to begin their stretching as well.