Animal Experimentation

Lola jams with the Manning Pep-Band. Shake your bootie Lola!

"Now that you've got the groove, this time let's REALLY move!" Lola helps the cheerleaders get the fans up on their feet.

Rena poses with her pal. This is the fifth kid to mascot for us this season. I won't name her because she wishes to remain anonymous, but I've wanted her to mascot for a long time, I even BEGGED her to tryout for mascot when her grades, luke-warm teacher reccomendations and tryout judges' scores kept her from making it back on as a straight cheerleader. She passed on mascot because she's also on Drill squad and thought that being sweaty and gross from the costume wouldn't mix well with performing with the Drill Squad. And there's this little thing with her mom blaming me entirely for her not making it back onto cheer, hating me, and therefore prohibiting her from having anything to do with Cheer or mascot.

That's really unfortunate because as you can see she did an AWESOME job, very animated, exaggerated, creative, cute, very funny, good with kids. Of the 15 mascots I've seen over the years, 3 or 4 could probably do it in college. She was definitely one of them and that she knows som much about cheerleading and gymnastics is a huge plus. I know it's not my place to hope for either of these things, but frankly, I hope she doesn't make it back on to Drill next year and I hope her mom's anger subsides so that she can either somehow forgive me, better yet see that I'm not to blame and it was an objective process, not something personal, and that she'll let her kid make her own decisions about involvement in school activities.