Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to compete at an international level in Hawaii, representing New Zealand in cheerleading.  The competition was an amazing experience and I recommend to anyone doing a sport or anything competitive to practise and train hard because if you ever find an opportunity fall into your lap like that you’ll never regret it. 

In case you’re wondering, my team came fourth, which was an amazing feat.  On top of that, we were very close in points to second place.

The hardest part about the whole thing was finding the balance between extra trainings, coaching, work and schoolwork, which was a little bit of a struggle.  I didn’t put time aside for my assignments and study, but learned from that error.  By putting a minimum of half an hour to 45 minutes a day towards assignments, you’ll find as I have, that stress levels drop drastically.

I’ve had a hip injury over the last two months and that has actually stopped me from a lot of training.  An MRI finally found the source of my issues.  Losing my passion was really hard and I felt slothful, unmotivated and just a bit empty.  I struggled a lot but, now that I can training again, I feel my spark has returned and I’m ready to get back into it for our team’s upcoming competitions. 

The nationals will be in Auckland and I hope we can look forward to another bid to compete overseas again!

Taylor Pettinari         

Third-year Bachelor of Recreation and Sport student