My name is Alejandra Avila, I am from Colombia and I have been here in NYC since 2008. This is my first year in NYC College of Technology.  I enjoy the way the city is build up and the way it works. The world becomes a multy-scenario for every individual to build and learned from their own personality and person. In life there is always one thing that defines who we are going to be, and later on it become the reason of who we are, and it helps to build our personality. In many cases this reason may be an object, a song, writing, our family, experiences and in many cases our sentimental partners. In my case there is one experience that has helped me to build up and define who I am which was cheerleading. Being a Cheerleader means to leads the crowd by shouting encouragement and supporting a team at a sports event with discipline and happiness.  Being a cheerleader was one of the most wonderful feeling and experience that I ever had on my entered life. I was a cheerleader for my elementary school “San Jose Campanath” in my native country. These memories define who I am because my family got together all in one place to support one of their family members. Cheerleading made me feel free and released me from all of my problems. Cheerleading forced me to be accurate and feel the adrenaline during the flips & the competitions I participated in were amazing.

Being all together in one place made me enjoy what I was doing and made me even happier each time it happened. I am the kind of person that loves family unity and even more when the whole family gets together to support one another. Years ago when my sister just started as cheerleading, the whole family went to support her. She was having an important presentation in one of the most famous theaters of our city Cali, Colombia. We all were proud of her because she was having a big moment. She was just 6 years old and she was having a presentation in the most famous theater as a cheerleader. This experience that I had that moment seeing my whole family together to support her made me realize that it can be even better if it was the two of us. The thought of my sister and I doing a presentation as cheerleader, along with our family cheering us on, encouraged me to become a cheerleader.

Becoming a cheerleader gave me the feeling of going to a psychologist. Prating this sport made me forgot about all my problems for at least a day, and aided me in finding solution to my problems. During my practices and presentations I tried to release all of my problems and focus in what I was going to do with my love for the sport. I gave up all my stresses that I was carrying with me, whether it was anything about school, fights with my family or with me. There was a time that I had a problem that I didn’t know if it could be fixed. My grandma who was my guardian at the time didn’t have any method of picking me up after every afterschool practice, so my mom told me that I have to quit. At first I thought how I’m going to quit the thing I love the most, I knew I was going to come up with a plan to prevent that my mom took me out from the team. Days later we had a competition between schools. During my performance I released all of my stresses, because I was doing what I loved by releasing my frustrations in a productive manner. When we were on stage we had the ability of making faces to the judges. That was the best way I could release all of my problems, moreover going into the sky while doing my flips made me feel like a free bird. I felt that no matter what there will always be a way to be free instead of being stuck in a cage. After this competition, we were in semifinal and it was a time that I couldn’t quit. My mom found a way that I could go home after the practice. She made this decision because my grandma told her how happy performing as a cheerleader made me. She realized that after every practice or presentation I was content due to cheerleading, my confidence grew and found myself happier than I’ve ever been.

Cheerleading was my biggest passion when I was just a girl. Everything around me was about this awesome sport. When I was playing with my friends I wanted to teach them what I knew the flips that I knew about acrobatics and the choreographies that the couch had taught us. I knew that it was dangerous because when the teacher was teaching us we had special equipment. However, when teaching other outside of the cheerleading, we didn’t have anything like that yet, we till did it. My sister and I tried to teach them the basics. These basics were the bridge, and the half-moon. I wanted them to feel the adrenaline that I was feeling when I did them. Yet, I  couldn’t tell if they were enjoying it as much as I did, but what I could tell it’s that I love and till this days love doing my flips and enjoy the sensation of being in the air and flowing with majesty beauty. I love the sensation of adrenaline that goes through my body. However, if you’re not careful, you may get injured.    As it happened around 9 years ago, we were preparing ourselves for the semi-finals. We were doing great. In this sport there must be four people as base and the one that goes on the top and does the flips in the air. Our couch saw that one of the base girls wasn’t paying attention to the girl on top and she could have gotten injured. Our couch gave us us and speech about the safety, looking after one another, and the importance of our focus. At the begging I was little worried because I was one of the girls that goes on top, due to being short and slim. I was afraid that I would get injured due to my classmates making a mistake. However, since this was a team effort, I felt my fate in my team mates’ hands and did what I had to do in the practices and presentations. The risk and the adrenaline never go away in this type of sport. It’s like doing an extreme sport but in a less extreme way.

You may ask yourself, why do I love the feeling of adrenaline so much, even thought I was just a little girl? Well I can say that I love the felling that I had during each performance we did for the school. Each time I was on stage it was awesome. I can’t describe the feeling that I used to feel with words. You can only understand the way I was felling if you saw my face during each of my performances. While I was cheerleading I enjoy more than what I could. There was a time while we had a really important presentation for very important people on one of the most famous theater in Cali. We were all prepared for this big day. We all were nervous of course but when the time arrives I was so nervous that I stood laughed and couldn’t stop. Before us there was an art presentation they had trees, clowns and all that kind of things on stage, I couldn’t control myself, which caused one of the trees to fall and people started laughing. It was not my intention, but it worked in a way because that is the purpose of our performance. It is to entertain people. It wasn’t the way I used to do it but it still work, but after that embarrassing  moment I pulled myself together and them I caught up with my group. The presentation ended up being a success. I love the feeling of happiness and freedom that this sport gave me for few minutes or even seconds. We made crazy faces and entertained the audience. Felt the air on my face and body, made figures on the air with my body and heard the reactions of the people that were surprise by the things we were doing. Hearing these things will encourage you to do them more offend and better. Being apart of the competitions or participating in the practice made me the cheerful girl that I needed to be in order to have the energy to participate in the cheers that were made by our couch. I enjoyed these performances as much as I could until I quit because I didn’t tolerate the mates I had.

Now that you know more about an experience that helped me build up my personality I will like to share what I would like to do with this experience and how it can help me in the future. Being a cheerleader is a thing of my past. Now I will like to be focused on my studies and becoming and engineer, moreover I really don’t have time now to be on sports. As you can notice I really love this sport, but in order to enjoy this sport to its fullest potential I need to dedicate time to it and that is what I don’t have at the moment. However I will like in the future to teach or at least tell my children about the good times and moments cheerleading have provided me.  I will love to see one of my children to share the passion I once had, but if they don’t like it for any reason I will be more than happy because I had the opportunity of been part of an awesome group at my time.