I was under the impression that middle school extracurricular activities are supposed to be low-key and fun, not a gladiatorial arena where grown adults can wage psychological warfare.
A mom named Christel, who goes by @christelholland2.0 on TikTok, recently attended her first cheer parent meeting with her husband for their 4th-grade daughter.
Well, upon leaving the room, she looked at her husband and said there’s no way they’re allowing their daughter to participate in cheerleading with their school because of all the insanity surrounding the parents.
Now, Christel’s daughter has always been involved in competitive sports and spent three years as a competitive gymnast, working three hours a day, six days a week on that.
“And like most kids, six days a week, she got burnt out. It happens…I mean, she was amazing, but she wanted to try something new,” Christel explained in her video.
Christel’s daughter expressed an interest in cheerleading, so Christel put her on a competitive team, which happened to be one of the best ones in the whole country.
While Christel’s daughter excelled, she didn’t have any friends, so she once again wanted to pick up another sport. Christel’s daughter has a friend on the cheer team via their local school district, and so Christel’s daughter said she would like to try it out.
Christel said she would go to the parent meeting and see about joining. Christel’s daughter wasn’t all in on doing this, but she had said she was curious.
Christel went to the meeting, and the coach who oversees cheer and football got up to speak to all of the parents who were present.
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“I think he was only there to lecture us, because he started off with, ‘I’m just going to say, I don’t like parents.’ And I looked at my husband, and I was like *insert raised eyebrows*,” Christel added.
“I get it, I’m sure he deals with a lot of drama, but I was just like in gymnastics and cheer the past year; no drama. No drama. Parents are nice, everybody got along, like I know that’s not the case all the time, but in my experience…all the parents were supportive.”
“I don’t know if I got really lucky with a good community there, but I…always loved the other moms…everybody was friends. Great experience with other parents in the past teams. So to walk in here and be lectured for 20 minutes about how drama is not going to be happening this year, and if you have drama, it’s going to be sorted out right away, if not, your daughter’s off the team, I was sitting there like, what’s going on?”
Christel wondered if she had entered the wrong room, as she dislikes conflict, and it appeared everyone sitting around her absolutely hated one another.
Christel went home and asked her daughter if she was committed to cheer or if she was open to doing volleyball instead. Her daughter was excited about volleyball, and that’s exactly what Christel put her in following that jarring cheer meeting.
What’s so upsetting to Christel is that this is a tiny school district, and she can’t believe that nobody fought over whose kid was better in a highly competitive environment, yet this is happening so close to home.
“What on earth? Nothing is ever this serious,” Christel concluded.
Well, the consensus among many parents and coaches in the comments section is that school sports are drama city.
“In my experience, if everyone is really good/competitive, there’s very little drama. If there are varying degrees of skill/competition, it’s all drama,” one person weighed in on Christel’s video.
“School sports are very different from competitive sports. School is almost always full of drama. Competitive sports, you see a bit of drama but usually not much because you’re all paying to be there,” someone else said.
“My school cheer team was just like Dance Moms. The moms had so much to say, always. not to mention how expensive it was!!!” a third person exclaimed.
By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
