Jaylee


As I pace under the bleachers of the stadium, the sound of gravel crunching and loneliness is all hear. The wind has somehow managed to sneak under these bleachers to tussle my short wispy hair. While the memories flood back, I realize all the games and wins have lost their appeal. That special element I used to feel lost it’s magic as all I can think about is my other half. It’s always been this way for as long as I remember: my brother the football player and I the cheerleader. In all honesty it has made my twin brother and me closer. I have been there to witness every catch, touchdown, and short-coming.

Most people have always considered us a unique package in the fact that we have the football/cheerleader element but since we are twins, we create our own special twist. I get the privilege of being the petite, spunky girl as the number one flyer of the cheerleading squad while my brother has climbed his way up the ladder to be the captain and lead wide-receiver of the football team. Even though it used to feel like one big cliché, I know it won’t feel this way anymore.

In the small town of Binkley, Tennessee, football means everything. Even though we haven’t had one of those seasons in which college scouts are lining up on the perimeter of the field, we aren’t that bad either. Each Friday night everything in town shuts down and the stadium is decked in red and black. Each has his own seat, and it is sort of like a Baptist church and its members’ pew. No one else sits there but him and only him. Most fans are filled with that Panther spirit and some adults are even pumping up the crowd more than us cheerleaders.

I remember attending my first football game in Binkley right after my family and I moved here in the second grade. My brother and I were more accustomed to city life. We had never experienced the close-knit feeling of a hometown where everybody knows everything about your family going six generations back. But, it soon became evident after arriving at my first game that football possessed top priority. I remember my mom ushering my brother and me to that chain link fence letting us take in the atmosphere that encompassed. The smell of nachos and fresh cut grass along with drummers strutting by made me feel elated.

After that first week my parents inserted us into football and cheerleading programs, and it has been that way ever since. I cannot say I despised it, but I had never been the girly-girl type. It took awhile for me to get used to the roll I was playing in my family, and I eventually began to love it. However, rolls change and that feeling of finally belonging I gripped tightly would never be the same after that one October evening.