WRITTEN TRANSCRIPTION OF THE PODCAST:

Hi and welcome to the 34th episode of my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. I am Dagmar Tomášková, I am English tutor and coach and I created this podcast for students of English who want to practice their listening skills. You can always find the transcription of the episode with a vocabulary list in the notes of the podcast. Without further ado, let’s go.

I am happy to be back after a two-week pause, sorry about that. But I will make it up to you by telling you another funny mini-episode from my life. Because believe me or not, I have many more in store. Some of my students asked me whether these stories are true… if they really happened to me. Sometimes I would be happy to say that I made it all up but to be honest, you can’t make these stories up. Everything I talked about in every episode really happened. 

So today I will tell you how I became a cheerleader coach without knowing anything about cheerleading. 

Just a quick definition- cheerleaders are the girls at sports games that cheer and jump and dance while the sportsmen play their sport. Very often, they have pom poms in their hands.  Okay, now let’s go.

It was a few years back, I was studying at university and trying to make some money on the side. I had many part-time jobs but none of them was really stable or enjoyable. So I decided to join a company where you work as a tutor or coach for groups of children. My initial plan was to teach English to groups of small children or maybe some physical education because I was also getting really interested in exercising. I mean, playing games with them or just dancing to music. Those were my strengths- English and some non-specific movement, I could do that. 

However, at that time, the company didn’t really have any group that I could teach so I was just in their database and waiting for them to find something for me. One day, they called me that they were in a pickle. To be in a pickle means to be in trouble. One of their cheerleader coaches broke her leg and she could no longer work with a group of small cheerleaders. They asked me whether I could cover it because they didn’t have anyone else to do it and they needed it as soon as possible. 

I told them: “But I don’t know anything about cheerleading, I was dancing when I was younger, yes, but it had nothing to do with this.”

 You know what they told me? 

…“Yeah, it doesn’t really matter, just take the pom poms and the girls will be happy.”. They practically begged me to take it. So what does a people pleaser like me do in this situation? Of course, I said yes. 

Now, when I look back at it, I really shouldn’t have done it. Not only was it miles outside my comfort zone, but it also took me maybe 30 minutes to get to the school where the lesson took place and 30 minutes back home and I only had that one group – which means I got paid almost nothing for the time I actually spent on it. 

A few days later I picked up the pom poms in their office and I was on my merry way to have my first cheerleading lesson with 8-10 year old girls. I was so nervous, I wanted to throw up. 

Of course, I found some information about cheerleading but I also didn’t really know the level of those girls or what their lesson looked like before. I came to that school and I could already feel that they didn’t like me. They were very disappointed that their old coach couldn’t come, obviously, they liked her very much. One of the girls liked her so much, she decided to always completely sabotage the whole training and just did whatever she wanted and if she didn’t want to do something, she just sat down and didn’t listen to me. 

The other thing is that it wasn’t even in a gym. We had a classroom so we always had to move desks away and practice at the end of the room. So we had almost no space at all. The first training was just a disaster for me. They were showing me what they could do and I was slowly catching on. To catch on means to understand something. I was writing down all the moves and after the first training, I created a choreography that I was teaching slowly throughout the weeks. 

Another thing that was stressing me out was that after a few weeks, there was supposed to be a lesson where the parents would come and watch them perform the choreography. I felt so bad, I really didn’t know what I was doing and I felt so stressed about it because some of the girls were missing a lot of the training lessons, sometimes they weren’t listening to me and of course, they were little girls, so they were arguing with each other all the time.

And that is how it went for the whole half a year I spent there. Honestly, even though with time it got easier and easier, I was dreading that hour I had to be there. To dread something means to worry about something or to be scared that something bad happens. 

I was counting down the weeks until I could finish and I couldn’t wait for the day after the training where the parents would be present. In the end, it wasn’t so bad. The parents were just happy to see their girls dance some form of choreography and made videos of it while I was at the front dancing with them. When I was leaving for the last time, I felt a huge stone falling off my back and I just felt relieved.

That was a lesson I needed. Since then, I have been careful about saying yes to things that I didn’t really feel comfortable with. So learn from my mistakes and don’t try to please everyone because, in the end, you will be the one who will feel miserable. 

Thank you so much for listening to this episode and don’t forget that you can find the transcription and vocabulary list in the notes. Please give it a five-star rating if you liked it and I will see you next time, bye-bye.