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DO. NOT. DO. CHEERLEADING.
Honestly. I missed tryouts in April, but was able to join the squad in September with informal tryouts, and just quit this past Sunday. Very few people actually enjoy the cheering, I just stuck it out for the friends I made, but after awhile, I just couldn't do it anymore. If you do choose to cheer, tryouts are the first weekend in April, and I can't give you the gist of it since I wasn't there, but I can ask my friends if you're interested. There's NCA camp in the summer, and you move in a day or two early for practice.
Practices are Sundays and Thursdays, supposed to be 6-9 but a) Sunday practices' times always changed and b) Thursdays' are always interrupted because a lot of first-year classes have tests Thursday nights 7-9. So basically practicing was hard, because so many people missed all of the time. Practices are mostly stunting, with a little bit of "throw what you can" tumbling for 5-10 minutes at the beginning.
Don't try to make plans ever, because you never know up until between a week and a day before what your schedule will be. If traveling to away games, you find out about a week in advance (which made me have to pay $500 to book flights for my high school's homecoming, because I didn't know whether I would have to go to Rice). Call time before games is about 3 hours in advance, and that's "game ready" so really you have to start getting ready 4-5 hours before the game begins. I really like Coach as a person, but she's not good about organization/schedules, and can be overly strict in practice--on Saturday, we had to stay 2 hours after the game, redoing everything from start to finish because one person made a very small mistake. Mind you, it was about 48 degrees and all we had on were our crop tops and very very short skirts... I was convinced I had hypothermia afterwards.
And then on top of all of that, there's morning workouts at McGugin, the athletic center, on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6 am. If you're late once, you get a warning, twice, you're off the squad. Mark isn't someone to mess with, either, and is a lot to handle so early in the morning.
Honestly, it was a big waste of time when I could have been joining one of the hundreds of organizations on campus like everyone else, and tailgating with them, and in general actually getting to experience the true Vandy experience, rather than watch it from the sidelines (punny, right?). It's not for everyone, obviously not for me, but if you're interested, you can message me with questions or whatever.
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