Cheerleading Debut - Sept 5, 2010

I am often struck by the same feeling these days: my little ones are growing up way too fast. This Sunday, Grace's junior cheerleading squad went to their first game and cheered on the flag football team of the local Youth Club. The teams and the cheerleaders are all part of the same extremely large and active program.

Grace's squad of eight girls, which is one of many such squads in her age group, practice one night a week for about an hour, and then have games this fall on weekends that last for an hour or more. At this age, the kids are playing flag football, not tackle football in pads, but that will come soon enough.

In flag football the way it is run here, each team gets a certain number of plays to run on offense, regardless of what happens in terms of scoring, and then the ball goes to the other team and roles are reversed. It is intended to get the kids ready for organized sports rather than to be hard-core football (yet).

Love the uniform!

The squad gets its very first taste of game action! It was extremely cute, and the girls mean well, but there are attention span issues, wind and sun problems, and all the other things that tend to afflict kids this age.

All that notwithstanding, I couldn't have been more proud of my little girl.