"Now Riverland High, the reining champions." The announcer said. We walked out onto the performance mat, a cushioned 13 x 13 mat. There wasn't a spotlight, or stage lighting, like in a ballet performance, but it didn't matter, we still glittered, like five white and purple stars.
The music started, a song called Final Mix, from the Nightmare Before Christmas. I stepped out from the group for my short solo sequence. A big jump, a jete, a stag leap, double cartwheel. Three consecutive turns, bouncing the ball on each one. Another jete brought me back to the group. Three of us, me and two others, made a small standing pyramid. The girl on top held her leg to her head. Nita and another girl, whose made was Claire, performed contortion tricks on either side.
We moved into a turns sequence, a triple turn to the leg in the split position and the ball held on our top foot, we brought our feet down, and did a turn with one leg bent, and one straight, like a figure skater.
Our routine finished. We were all gasping for breath when we got back to the dressing and warm-up room. Sophie, our coach, was waiting there, "That was pretty good," in her hand she had a notebook, presumably a list a things we'd messed up, "Brooke," she said to the girl who'd been on the top of the pyramid, "You lost your balance for a moment in the pryamid. What would have happened in a cheer competition?"
"We would have gotten a deduction." She said.
"Claire, you didn't warm up properly, you couldn't do all the tricks as well as Nita today." Sophie continued.
"Sorry Sophie." Claire said apologetically. The contortion was her thing. I could see she felt like she had failed.
"Rose," I looked up as Sophie spoke, "You need to work on her flexability and apparatus handling. You fumbled in your solo turns with the ball."
"Yes Sophie." I was disapointed, because I knew it was true. Sure, there had been no major disasters, but we hadn't been nearly clean enough to get up with the standard our team had set last year. I was the worst girl of the five, and everyone knew it.
