During high school I was on the cheer team, and looking back, it was absolutely one of the most embarrassing things I have done, but I don’t regret the experience.
It is a phase that helped me form some of the closest friendships that I still have today.
Being a cheerleader was somewhat exhausting though, and we practiced in our gym when the basketball team was practicing. I enjoyed it because I was dating a point-guard. It was fun to see him often but the worst section about practicing in the gym was how hot it would get though. The cooling system always blew out, but it didn’t absolutely work for the corners of the gym for some reason. It seemed to enjoy cooling off the basketball players more than anyone else. My dad said that the gym had exhausting zone control issues but I had no idea of what that meant. He told us that there was uneven distribution of air going towards every section of the gym through an intricate zoning process. The gym was older and it hadn’t had a renovation in about twenty years, so it made sense that the zone control was either not completed, or weakened over the duration. The principal said that they had plans to renovate the entire school’s heating and air conditioning system, but they never did it while I was a student. Cheer practices would have been a lot more enjoyable if we had cold air to cool us off during the Spring. We were thankful that none of us did not have to practice over the Summer like the basketball team. I can only imagine how brutal those practices must’ve been, but then again, they had a cooling system blowing on their court.