Standing Tall by Spencer West

Author:Spencer West
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO26000
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2011-08-08T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

In the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to meet many great people worldwide—from Kenya to China, from India to Canada. And I’ve heard and read about how some of the great people in this world knew, starting when they were small children, that they were meant to do something important in this world—to live big, or as Williamson says, shine. The stories of Mother Teresa and Elie Wiesel, for example, have inspired me. And Matthew Shepard’s father was all too aware that children, all children, are destined for something. For in that same talk he gave at the trial, he also said: “My son Matthew did not look like a winner. He was uncoordinated and wore braces from the age of thirteen to the day he died. Although, in his all-too-brief life he proved he was a winner. I keep wondering the same thing I did when I first saw him in the hospital … what would he have become? How could he have changed his piece of the world, to make it better?”

As for me, I didn’t have any such knowing, and I’m not so sure those around me did, either. I knew I was going to live a long life, and I was not aware that the doctors and nurses were afraid that I would die during my high school years. I was also unaware that they had expressed these fears to my Mom and Dad. Mom was very good at protecting me from her worries, doubts and fears. But I never felt I was special. In fact, I spent the first part of my life just trying to fit in. I never felt a calling. I never felt something stir inside of me. That is, until just before my high school graduation in 1999.

I was on the cheerleading squad. Oh yes. I was a Rock Springs High School cheerleader. I didn’t wave pom-poms, but I wore a cool black shirt, which matched the girls’ dresses, with the word TIGERS written on the front in orange and white lettering. I was one of three boys in my graduating year to be on the first ever co-ed Rock Springs cheerleading squad. I cheered for the football team in the fall and the basketball team in the spring. And if ever there was a moment during that tumultuous Grade 12 year when I did feel afraid, really afraid—like the bull’s-eye on a target—it was in March, when my squad headed to the cheerleading state championships in Casper, Wyoming.

The event center in Casper was jam-packed with parents, friends and basketball players from all the high schools around the state. The cheerleading competition was being held right before the basketball state championships. Even the media were out, wanting something positive to report on.

Throughout most of the other cheerleading performances, the jocks on the basketball teams were screaming, howling, whistling and jeering no matter how much athleticism the cheerleaders put into their routines, including the throws and tumbling. Really, the athletes never considered what we did a sport.

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