Hi, I’m Rachel but you can call me Rach (please don’t call me Beans, no matter who sent you).

I’m a cheerleader and coach, originally from North Wales but currently living just north of Manchester. I’m running the new Friday segment I like to call “Upside-down-time” here at Cheer From Head to Toe. Let me introduce myself!

Sport has been a huge part of my life since the age of four. I was a competitive gymnast for a number of years until my love of swimming overtook this. I was that girl in school that ALWAYS had wet hair. I would be up at 5am training before school, after school, plus gym sessions and travelling the country at weekends competing. I made a lot of sacrifices but when I placed at Counties and made it to Welsh Nationals, it made it all worthwhile for me. Sport had completely shaped my personality, developing drive, ambition, discipline and not to mention organisation and time management skills as I trained and competed right through my GCSEs and A Levels.

Of course all good things must come to an end. Throughout my later teenage years I suffered a number of repetitive and career-ending injuries. I was absolutely heartbroken, and for a long time I lost my spark. Swimming was my identity, it was who I was. Plus, what was I to do with a spare 20 hours in the week? I spent a long time thinking about this “spark” I had lost. Do other people have sparks? Can I get my spark back? Is it measurable? The more I thought about this “spark”, the more I researched and developed an interest into Mental Health and Sport Psychology. Slowly but surely my love of psychology grew and I was off to university to study Psychology with Sport and Exercise Science.

After I was no longer able to swim, cheerleading was there to pick me up and dust me off. After my swimming career ended, I didn’t think there was much else I could gain from another sport, especially as a beginner. How wrong I was. Whilst I had teammates in swimming, I was still competing against them at competitions. In cheer, our team become our family. We share the same goals, same mindset, and look at that, I’m a national champ too! I’ve participated in School Cheer, Uni Cheer and All Star. I’ve been an athlete, team captain and coach. It’s a sport based on hard work. So, unlike swimming, you don’t need to have been training from the age of eight to succeed, you just need to have the right mindset and work ethic!

Aside from cheerleading, I’ve done a lot of volunteering and different job roles. I’ve volunteered in psychiatric hospitals and rehabilitation centres in Sri Lanka, and a Children’s Centre at a Refugee Camp in Dunkirk, France – and I am very privileged to have done so. Not only was I totally immersed into new cultures, I learned how different societies approach mental health and mental healthcare, and the different traumas we experience across the globe. I graduated in 2016, BSc Psychology with Sport and Exercise Science (joint honours). I loved the research I was conducting so much I went onto do a Masters where I focused on suicide. Here I created and delivered an intervention to young people experiencing severely low mood. Since then, I’ve gone on to deliver wellbeing workshops in schools, been the Safeguarding and Welfare Coordinator in International Summer Schools, I’ve worked with young people in care, in psychiatric hospitals here in the UK, I’ve worked with individuals who are being exploited and now I work in the NSPCC. I’m so proud of how I’ve managed to turn things around for myself. For such a long time I was feeling so low after my injuries and losing my spark, but I was able to use that to fuel my passion in the work I do today.

Whilst at university, I got talking to the famous Caroline here at Cheer From Head to Toe, and we came up with the idea of the “Diary of a University Cheerleader”. It followed my uni team (shout out to the Chester Vixens) throughout the season and has since gone on to follow other fantastic teams, showcasing all that uni cheer has to offer. More recently, I got talking to Caroline again with a new idea, wellbeing. I’ve gained a lot of knowledge and experience from my degrees, my voluntary and professional work. I want to use that to give back to the cheerleading community. Cheerleading was there for me throughout my highs and lows, it’s taught me lessons my schoolteachers never could. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will have noticed world is pretty upside down at the moment. If like me, cheer is the one constant keeping you sane, you may feel a little lost and have lots of questions. This is where “Upside-down-time ” comes in.

Sometimes things happen that are completely out of our control and it scares us. We have negative experiences that can affect our mood, or sometimes we feel low completely out of the blue. We may feel confused and lose interest in the things we love the most. These feelings are TOTALLY NORMAL responses to negative experiences. But, just sometimes it gets a little too much and we may need to reach out for support from friends, families, even doctors and counsellors – that’s OK. The most important thing to know is that you are not alone in those thoughts. Over the years I’ve learnt different tactics, lessons and advice to deal with these emotions and that’s what I want to share.  Cheerleading has given me so many new skills, friends, medals and fantastic memories. On the flip side, we “lose” competitions, we don’t make our dream team after try-outs, cheer can be very time consuming and expensive – and they can all feel pretty pants! Yet, we carry on. Why? Because the pros outweigh the cons and I’m here to remind you of that, and maybe explain why the cons aren’t so pants after all.

Cheerleading has turned out to be a pretty important part of my life. I know it’s pretty important in yours too. So stay tuned every Friday to hear how cheerleading can benefit our mood and health, hear advice for try-outs, and lets not forget the elephant in the room, COVID-19. It’s OK to feel upside-down sometimes, lets normalise it!

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