This blog is a little different than my others and most likely only cheerleaders will be able to follow this, but as the competitive season of cheerleading is heading to a close I find myself a little nostalgic. Although I am now a sophomore in college and a cheerleader at Baylor University and chose to end my competitive cheerleading career when I graduated high school, my heart is especially tender now as my sister is graduating and my last ties to Spirit of Texas are about to be broken. I have wanted to write this blog for a long time now, but I knew the things I learned through cheering at Spirit would follow me way after my time there had ended.

SO, this is

WHAT SPIRIT OF TEXAS HAS TAUGHT ME

Majority of my life was spent in the gym growing up. I had cheered at other gyms, but since I was a little girl I had watched the Spirit of Texas teams compete and not only fell in love but I knew immediately that was exactly who I wanted to be. When I came to Spirit I was good, I wasn't great. But Spirit pushed me and opened my eyes to an entirely new realm of not only cheerleading, but life. I had the amazing privilege of being apart of teams that won everything and teams that just absolutely fell apart. But regardless, Spirit has taught me so many things that I will value and cherish for the rest of my life.

(And quick shoutout to my A-Team. Y'all are apart of a great legacy now. Y'all make me proud every day)

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Spirit taught me that being the best is earned. If you wanted to be the best, you had to work harder than anyone else ever had. It's the full outs, the extra conditioning, it's the times where you're pushed past anything you thought your body could handle and running the routine over and over until there were no mistakes in order to make sure that no team would ever be able to touch you. You had to push more, you had to fight harder than you ever had before. Spirit not only taught me how to work hard, but how to fight for something. Spirit taught me how to look at your dreams and the desires of your heart and say that you would stop at nothing to achieve it. As i've continued on in life it has shown me that I CAN achieve the things I set my mind to. I can be the best. And and in order to do that you have to work your butt off! Lol it pains me to say this because it's so cliche, but THE WORK IS WORTH IT! It is so worth it to me now when I get an A on that test, or I got that job, or I feel the freedom i'm promised in running after my relationship with Christ, or I get through to a struggling friend, or I make that deep connection, or I earned enough money to travel to that place... there are so many things that I can name, and it is because Spirit taught what it's like to work hard, to earn your success, to fight harder than you ever have for the things you desire, and to experience and reap the benefits and the pure satisfaction of achieving these things.

Spirit taught me how to be bold. How to rise to the occasion. Spirit taught me that being mediocre, that being ordinary is not what we we're created and placed on this earth for. Spirit taught me that we were created to be extraordinary and to do extraordinary things! We weren't meant to settle for less than our absolute best, we were created to rise up into our fullest potential and achieve greater things than our doubt tells us to settle for. Never once did they pat us on the back and tell us that our practice or our full out or our performance was great if there was even one deduction, one wrong motion, one bobble. They never let us move on, never gave us the praise for something that was not the absolute greatest that we could possibly do. And you know what? That was the greatest thing to ever happen to me. Because no longer am I able to settle for average, no longer am I satisfied with less than the greatest I can be. I will never forget the day that our coaches finally looked at us and told us that our performance was amazing. I will never be able to forget the rush of the memories of winning so many undefeated seasons. I will never forget the pure heart-wrenching joy of looking at the coaches box at the end of the routine as they're jumping up and down hysterically, holding their fists together high in the air to say that we had zero deductions. Spirit has taught me that I don't have to settle for that boy, I don't have to settle for those friends, I don't have to settle for living a type of lifestyle, I don't have to settle for loving people averagely or settle for not running after the things and the goals I desire. Spirit taught me that I do not stop until i'm the best I can be. I do not stop until i'm living in a way that stands out, that is looked up to, that has more meaning, power and drive than the rest of this world.

Spirit taught me how to be humble. Spirit has taught me that although we strive for the best, that by no means does that mean we are any better than the person next to us. Spirit taught me that our strengths and our talents are a gift from God and that we are blessed to be where we are today, it is not owed to us. Spirit taught me that we're not always perfect and that we fall and we mess up and that we have bad days and that we are not invincible. Spirit taught me that our successes are a privilege and that this life, this drive, this hard work is about so much more than ourselves. Spirit taught me what it is like to have thousands and thousands of eyes looking at you and watching your every move. Spirit taught me that because of this, your life and the choices you make do not only affect you but also the ones around you. Spirit taught me how to set myself aside in order to think about those around me, in order to serve those around me, and in order to fight for the lives of the people next to me more than my own. When we came into practice we weren't doing it for ourselves, we were fighting as hard as we were for the people next to us who wanted it just as badly as we did.

It is by the grace of God that I somehow had the amazing opportunity to be a 2014 Varsity Fashionista and got to represent them as the cover of their 2014 Varsity Cover Book. Between the attention I received from being on a Spirit of Texas team alone and then also representing Varsity, I was amazed to see the amount of young girls looking up to me. Not just me, but I was amazed at the amount of people who not only looked up to my teammates, but also followed them and their actions. Spirit taught me that my life isn't about being selfish and doing everything that I want to do and acting in a way that is pleasing to me. Spirit taught me that I was apart of something much bigger than myself and that it was my job to think about those around me before myself. It taught me that I had to decide what kind of person I wanted to be, what kind of example I wanted to set. If I wanted to act in a way that would lead others to defeat or if I wanted to act in a way that led others to victory.

Spirit has taught me never to give up. I have been apart of 2 first year teams at Spirit. This first one was my sophomore year of highschool in the International All-Girl 5 Division... after trying and trying the team ended up falling apart and getting dismantled and I hopped from team to team that year at Spirit in order to compete. So then you can imagine my excitement when my senior year I was told that I was going to be apart of starting another first-year team in the Medium All Girl 5 division, or what we later named ourselves, A-Team. We started off the year with a total of 6 girls out of 30 that had ever cheered together. And it was a nightmare. I mean NIGHTMARE. No team has even gotten kicked out of the gym more times than we did that year. But even as all hope seemed lost and like we were never going to work or have any type of success whatsoever, our coaches wouldn't give up on us and we weren't going to either. I had some of the absolute worst memories that year and at the same time, the absolute greatest memories that I will never be able to forget. We ended up having an undefeated season all year up until Worlds when we got Silver (still bitter), we set a new record of highest score at Cheersport and won Grand Champion of our division and the entire competition.. and it was one of the most amazing times of my life. And it was all because Spirit and our incredible staff would not let us give up. They would not stop pushing us, they would not let us settle, they believed in us and our ability and was not going to let us quit until we reached everything we had been fighting so hard for! Their push and their belief has followed me into the rest of my life because now I have felt and I have seen what it is like to have no hope and to keep fighting. I know what it's like to have rough patches and to know that working through rough patches means that something great is going to emerge from it. You just have to keep going.

Most of all, Spirit taught me what it's like to love, what it's like to trust and what it's like to live for something much greater than ourselves. Spirit taught me what it's like to have friendships and partnerships that rely on each other and fight for one another and equally invest in one another. Spirit taught me how to lift each other up and to push aside a bad attitude so you can enjoy the company you're with. Spirit taught me how to experience some of the hardest times of our lives with the team I was surrounded by and what it's like to pick someone up when they barely have enough emotional strength to get out of bed in the morning and what it's like to lean on someone and let someone walk alongside you when it seems like your world has never been worse. Spirit taught me not to mock or put down differences, but to embrace and celebrate them! I cannot even describe how amazing and incredible it is to have such deep and pursued relationships with guys and girls that are SO different and unique from one another. People's hearts and minds are so beautiful when you set aside your differences and put aside what might bother you or annoy you about a person and instead find out what makes them tick and to celebrate exactly who they are, to seek after their heart! Spirit taught me that our God is greater and ultimately we don't rely on our own strength, but on His. Spirit is proof that believing in someone can push them to achieve amazing and incredible things.

So this is to you, Brett, Brad, Krista, Loo, Teigh, Dahlston, Tiffany and all you other Spirit coaches now and in the past. You guys are incredible and have blessed my life and so many others with gifts that we will cherish for the rest of our lives. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would. But since I can't, I just want to say

Thank you,

You have taught me so much.

I love you guys!