Brynn's Adventures

Jan 25, 2026

I’ve had dreams about cheer for three nights in a row now. They’re not all the same – each one feels like a continuation of the night before, like my brain is binge-watching a season of my life that almost existed.

In the first, I’m sitting on the mat in my college gym with two of my former teammates. We’re yapping , and I bring up that I’ve decided to go back to school and get a master’s, just so I can compete with the team again. It feels like an easy decision, the girls agree. One of them is a nurse in real life, so I suppose, in this scenario, she’s also taken an extra year. It just makes sense!

The next night, episode two premieres in my head. I’m giving some sort of cheesy, coming-of-age movie speech at tryouts about how this might just be a silly dare for some people, but for others, the chance to be on the mat again is everything. I’m trying to convince my former coaches, but also myself, that my wanting this badly is reason enough.

By the third night, the dreams are fully immersive, each one feels like a memory. I wake up with that strange, disorienting ache, like I was just there – back in Kamloops, back at TRU, back with the WolfPack, chasing the fire I only ever felt on the mat. The kind you don’t really get to experience anywhere else. It can’t be replaced.

I haven’t really reminisced on my brief career as a collegiate cheerleader in a while, but ’tis the season. This time last year, we were at Worlds.

This time last year, I was at the biggest competition in collegiate cheerleading: ICU Worlds in Florida. I can still picture it clearly – hours each day practicing in random fields scattered around the Disney campus, squeezing in reps wherever there was space, giggling all night long, studying the previous day’s recordings, and training in legendary cheer gyms around Orlando that I had only ever seen online before. My body ached every single morning when I woke up, we went through several rolls of KT tape. But the second I was with my team, repping out our stunts, everything else fell away.

I don’t know if there are words that can fully describe the warm-up room at a competition like that. The noise alone feels electric. You’re right beside your competitors and your role models, watching them hit full-out routines just feet away while you work through your own meticulously timed warm-up, knowing you’re minutes from stepping onto the mat. I’m getting goose bumps writing about it.

We came home with third place in the world in our category! The first-ever podium finish for our program at Worlds. At the time, it didn’t feel like an ending. It definitely felt open-ended, like this was just another chapter.

I still haven’t touched the vlog footage I recorded while we were there. I tell myself it’s because there is way too much of it, hours and hours of clips, where do I even start?! But I think the real reason is one that’s much harder to admit: once I make that video, it will feel like it’s truly over. And even though I know it is, I don’t think I was, or am, ready to face that yet.

Unedited footage has a strange way of holding time hostage.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about going back to that vlog but with a different approach. Making it for the version of myself that lived it without realizing how significant it was. Maybe we can only revisit certain moments once we’re far enough away from them to not fully fall apart.

When I think back to the dream where I’m giving that speech – in episode 2, the one about how much cheer means to me – I’m stuck thinking about why I felt the need to justify why I was there at all.

Who was I trying to convince?

Sometimes it feels silly to be so deeply passionate about something you’re still relatively new at. Especially when you’re surrounded by people who’ve done it their whole lives. It’s frustrating to love something so fiercely while also feeling like you arrived way too late to the party.

Honestly, I tried out for the cheer team fully expecting not to make it. My boyfriend and I were at the bar, and I saw the ad for tryouts on Instagram. We joked about it and I signed up. Little did I know the impact it would have on me; it was all-consuming.

I only found cheer in my second year at TRU – which was really my sixth year of post-secondary, thanks to transferring programs, credits, and universities more times than I like to admit. Technically, I had five years of eligibility left. Realistically, I needed to finish my degree.

I could have stretched school out even longer to keep cheering; plenty of people do. But after already spending seven years working toward a bachelor’s degree, it felt foolish to even consider dragging it out further, just for cheer.

Well, that’s what I told myself.

After all those dreams, I’m not so sure. Maybe being practical cost me more than I realized at the time. Maybe I would’ve had more closure if I’d finished the season properly.

I left the team shortly after Worlds due to a recurring thumb injury that wouldn’t have healed in time for the rest of the competitions (speaking of my thumb, it’s even acting up as I type this, I suppose it will be a reminder of my days in cheer for years to come lol). If I’m being completely honest, my ego – and my school timetable – couldn’t justify over twelve hours of practice a week just to backspot one pyramid and hit some motions. There were some team and coaching politics at play too, which only made the decision heavier.

It was a quiet exit, and I think that made it worse.

I think that all collegiate athletes experience a version of what now when they graduate, and their sport disappears from their lives. But cheer is different.

There is no casual version of level 7 collegiate cheer. There’s no rec league or drop-ins. Until very recently, there wasn’t even a professional league. Cheerleaders will be in my comments talking about open gyms and adult teams, but if you know, you know. All-star cheer is not the same thing. It’s like hockey versus ringette. Similar on the surface but fundamentally different.

Being forced to outgrow something when you’re not ready to is its own kind of heartbreak.

What makes it worse is realizing you didn’t even know this dream existed until you were already running out of time. Mourning something you never fully got to become. Loving something deeply – and then discovering it has a swift expiration date.

The grief sneaks up on me around big events like Worlds and UCA Nationals. It’s like a heavy nostalgia mixed with regret, but also pride.

Everyone loves to say it’s never too late to find your passion, and maybe that’s true. But there are time limits on some things, no matter how optimistic the internet wants to be about it.

Sometimes you don’t miss something until you’ve already missed it.

Maybe this is my sign to finally edit that world’s vlog and close the chapter gently. To honour something that mattered deeply to me, even if it didn’t last as long as I wanted it to.

If you’ve ever loved something only to realize you found it too late, you probably understand this feeling. I’m just grateful that it existed at all.

I don’t need cheer back in my life to know how much it meant to me. I think I just needed to say it out loud, once, before moving on.