Poetry Extension

Small Victories! - Eric Cockrell

small minds, small dreams,
small prayers, small God.
small thoughts, small answers,
to questions not small!

playing the race game,
the salvation game,
the mine and yours game,
the right and wrong game.

like cattle herded
unknowingly to slaughter.
every body a ticket,
to pay the fare.

bigger picture, bigger concepts,
bigger than i and me!
bigger risk, bigger world,
bigger choices, small victories.



The theme of my narrative is that, even if you don't win, there are small victories. The first place in my narrative where I believe this stands out is when I realize that, even though we weren't recognized at the award ceremony, we were going to be displayed in the standings on the website. This realization comes after coaches delivered news to the team, telling us that we'd got tenth place and were classified as National Champions in our division, even though we weren't first or second place, where we originally wanted to be. Despite not getting the spot we wanted, we were still National Champions, which was part of our goal in the first place. Another spot in my narrative where the small victories theme shows up is when our coaches tell us that we'd beat the Raleigh Bulldogs, the team that had originally beat us.  In Regionals (the competition before Disney, where teams had to make first or second place to compete at Disney), the Raleigh Bulldogs won first place with us behind them, in second. They were a really good team, and a sidebar of our goal to get to Disney and become National Champions was to beat them. We didn't beat them in Regionals, where it seemed like it would have mattered more, but we beat them in Nationals, were it actually had more influence. We were National Champions and they were not. Another place in the narrative where this stands out is when I'm hugging my sister after the two victories were announced to the team. This might seem like a small and ordinary detail, but it is rather important. I started cheering when I was seven years old, when cheering at Disney seemed like a dream and was only something I watched cheerleaders on TV do, so having the opportunity to perform on the same mat that other National Champions performed on was an honor for not only me, but my sister, too, who helped give this dream its life. Being there and completing a dream with my sister that we had both birthed was special to both of us, even if we didn't win first place, which was the original goal.

I'd like to tie all of this back to the poem above. The title is Small Victories! which is also the theme of my piece, but that isn't the only reason I chose this one for the limelight. The theme of this poem is similar to the theme of mine, where it seems that the dreams are set small, then they grow larger until the only goal that was achieved was the one that was set first. I'll start with the first stanza, where everything is small. "small thoughts, small answers,/ to questions not small!" are the last two lines of the first stanza. Reading this line, I remember in the beginning of my narrative where I was looking at the rest of my team, all of them trying to remember parts of the routine that they had to clean up. Everyone who is thinking over the routine is remembering the small things, such as "Keep my roll tight!" or "Don't forget to go to spot A first before spot B!" or "Catch her and go to this formation, not the other one" and so on. All of these small thoughts that the team is remembering were once, during practices, big questions that were going to make the routine clearer. Eventually, these small thoughts would lead to the routine being performed correctly on the floor and then the standings in which the judges would choose based on how well we'd executed the routine, onto the paper that would tell us that yes, we were National Champions and yes, we beat the Raleigh Bulldogs. "like cattle herded/ unknowingly to slaughter." is the first half of the third stanza of the poem. I can compare the team being the cattle herded unknowingly to slaughter in the way that we were paraded back into the stadium, not knowing whether or not we were going to get the standing we so desired. At first, after the division winners were announced, it felt like our dreams had been slaughtered, but as it turned out, a few paragraphs later, we got two small victories that would make a big difference. "bigger picture, bigger concepts,/ bigger than i and me!/ bigger risk, bigger world,/ bigger choices, small victories." Everything about what the team and I did was big. The big picture was that we were going to be National Champions as a competition team. The big concept was that we'd get to Nationals and compete on the blue mat at the ESPN stadium down in Florida. The crowd was bigger than I was, bigger than the team, while we were on the mat, small against it. The big risk was getting onto that mat, knowing that we had to go big or go home while the whole crowd watched us and the judges decided our fate. The biggest choice, though, was the choice that our coaches gave us at the beginning of the season. Did we want to do this? Did we want to go perform on that mat, down in Florida, in front of a huge crowd, risking a big win or a sorrow-filled loss? The big answer to that was yes, and the small victories that came out of it were two things that we wanted but didn't quite get the way we thought we'd achieve them.

(For pictures of our team, follow this link: http://wcwaa.org/Page.asp?n=5295&org=WCWAA.ORG)