A little like herding cats.

Last night was my first Upward Cheerleading practice.

Oh. My. Word.

Let’s just say that our squad is made up of girls ranging in age from 5 to 9, and I’m just saying that age difference is WAY more than 4 years. Those 9 year old are going on 21 and actually scare me a tiny bit. They kept wanting to do tumbling and stunting, which is NOT allowed in Upward, thank goodness. Because I can just see them deciding to launch the five year old into a basket toss and me having to explain to her parents that we do have a plan to remove her from the ceiling tiles. There was one little girl who was either very excited and having trouble learning to harness that excitement in useful ways, hyper, or had consumed copious amounts of caffeine and sugar prior to coming to practice. She just wanted to scream. A lot. And talk over me when I was trying to teach the cheer. And when I asked her to do the “Ready, OK” she either wouldn’t do it or did it in a monster voice. Fun, yes, but not exactly helpful.

It’s hard manage girls who range in age that much. You don’t want to bore the older ones, but have to keep things simple so that you don’t go over the little one’s heads or skill levels. The older ones know I’m uncool; the younger ones think I’ve got it going on. And the moms come to practice and stay. So they’re watching you interact with their kids and it puts you into a weird situation when you need to reprimand a child, but don’t know if it’s OK to do so with the parent in the room. Let’s just say this: hyper girl is getting some stern words next week, if necessary.

I tried teaching a cheer, but really that was organized chaos. I explained a motion over and over and over, only to see this one little girl was going to do it her way no matter what. It was loud, a tiny bit insane, and completely, over-the-top fun. It’s been awhile since I’ve taught kids anything (I taught a kids discipleship class all through college) and I forgot how fun/challenging/insane/sweet it really is.

So, practices have started. We practice next week, take 2 weeks off, then have one more practice before our first game. This is going to be CHAOS!

But fun, spirit fingers kind of chaos.