hall of SHAME

Surviving a fall from cheer grace
First comes that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. Then the flush creeps up your neck and over your cheeks, you start to sweat and your knees feel weak if you're at a cheer competition, and it's not a case of the flu, these are most likely symptoms of an ache familiar to every cheerleader - the shame and embarrassment over a stunt or move gone awry. You can barely lift your eyes, let alone face your teammates, coach, family and fans. You might experience a range of other emotions, similar to stages of grief, including shock, pain, frustration, depression, anger, loneliness and fear.
The good news is, these feelings are normal, and they can actually help you become a stronger athlete and a better teammate (see sidebar for tips on what to do when your friend is the one who's upset over a misstep), and learn valuable skills to cope with difficult situations.
A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM
Morgan Styer, 18, of All American Cheer and Stunt in Kansas City, MO, was stunned by both the physical and emotional pain of falling during a routine at competition. "Everyone landed their tumbling, had successful Baskets, stuck the pyramid and hit their stunts - except me," she says. "I fell on my two [handsprings] to a full, then had a top girl fall on me during stunts. She gave me an elbow to the face and broke my finger." A brave Styer did her best to complete the routine despite her discomfort, all the while fearing the worst to come from her team. "For the rest of the routine, I smiled through the pain and a bloody nose, expecting my teammates to hate me for messing up," she says. Making a mistake at a crucial point can be devastating, but add physical pain to the mix and the results are a crushing blow to the system.

 
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?
Once the initial shock of a mistake wears off, it's naturai to want to dissect the incident over and over to try to figure out what went wrong. You replay the scene in your mind, wishing to turn back the clock and hoping it was all a bad dream. This is a dead-end cycle, because endless worrying won't fix the situation. However, you can rework the incident in a positive way. If you can realistically and fairly review what happened, you can decide whether or not the mistake was caused by a factor that was within your control.
If the mistake was within your control - for example, you were recovering from an injury and shouldn't have been stunting - then you know that next time you have to let yourself fully heal before performing. But if your foot cramped up, or some other uncontrollable force was at work, you have to work toward acceptance, not blame. "Think about what happened and why," says Judy VanRaalte, professor of psychology at Springfield College in Massachusetts, former president of the American Psychological Association division of exercise and sport psychology and former VP of the International Society of Sport Psychology. "If the cause is controllable - you didn't have the right amount of training, you didn't warm up, you didn't sleep or eat right - think about what you need to do to prevent it from happening again. If the cause is uncontrollable, like something happened in the room to distract you, realize that sometimes things like that happen. Do your best to control what you can."
The pain and sadness over an incident often magnifies its importance in your mind. After her painful fall, Styer's teammates greeted her with "hugs, smiling faces and ice," she notes, not the anger and disappointment she anticipated.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON
So how do you bounce back from a mistake when the competition isn't over? "You're judged more on how you come back from a devastating loss, or from being at the bottom, than you are from how you handle success," says Ronald L. Kamm, MD, an adult and adolescent psychiatrist in private practice in New Jersey, who's consulted high school, college and professional athletes. "It's not how low you fall, it's how you handle it and whether you come back Real character and toughness are bom from loss." If you can put on a smile and keep moving, you can salvage more than you might expect.
"My coaches always taught us to keep smiling and moving," says Jomarya Diver, a varsity cheerleader at Bishop Kearney HS in Brooklyn, NY. "At competition two years ago, we did a ripple stunt in a straight line going from the front of the mat to the back. My stunt group was one and we messed up. We were very upset, but stuck it out and kept going with the routine. If you continue with a smile on your face and put a lot of energy into the rest of the routine, it can make up for your mistake."
If all else fails, fake it till you make it. You can always take a private moment to absorb the sadness later, but a great finish is than letting the whole routine go because of one mistake. "When I mess up at a competition, I keep going through the routine strongly and don't think about it," says Kayla McHaIe, a member of the Senior Coed Prodigies at Ultimate Athletics in Wauconda, IL. "If it does come back into my mind during a transition or some other part of the routine, I think about a practice where I hit it perfectly, and try to move on."