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Wells said, \u201cHeather was a big part of my recovery. She encouraged me to get better so I could cheer. Watching my friends from the sidelines that year was hard, but it was a goal I could work toward. I made the team when I finally got to try out the next year. I wasn\u2019t at the weight my parents or doctors wanted, but I was on a healthier path and made the team. We had girls of all different sizes on our team, and Heather didn\u2019t care about that. She wanted us all healthy and strong. She helped me see [that] strong girls were awesome. She required us to work out, and I fell in love with it. Heather would often work out with me and encouraged me to stay on a healthy path. I really looked up to her, and we still keep in touch. She made you work, and she taught us discipline.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wells fought her way back to cheer, but dance was the road home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She said, \u201cDance has always been my favorite. I did body movement therapy\/ dance therapy at Renfrew. It\u2019s what helped pull me out. I\u2019ve never been really good at talking about my feelings. At Renfrew, I didn\u2019t want to talk about anything. But they put me in body movement therapy where they have you move across the floor and do these exercises. After watching for a while, I started to participate and found it was a way to get it all out without having to speak. It was what my soul needed. Now I get to choreograph dances for our studio and other people. I like being able to tell a story. Through dance, you can express how you feel, and you can tell a story, and that really helped pull me out. The prospect of being able to cheer\/perform again got me on the path to recovery, and dance gave me a different way to express myself. It was a private way of dealing for a long time; now I get to share that with my dancers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, Wells is the assistant cheer coach at North Middle School and has also coached high school cheer. At her Winchester dance studio, Center Stage Dance Company, she is positioned to help reshape the self-image of the students on her dance teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI feel the reason I went through what I did was so I could be there to help other girls, to use what I went through as a platform to help other people. So through cheerleading and dance, I\u2019ve had the opportunity to mentor girls and tell them, \u2018Your size doesn\u2019t matter. You can do anything that anybody else can do, and you\u2019re beautiful the way you are.\u2019 God has put me in the studio and involved me in mentoring cheerleading so that I can be that voice. I feel like He uses me through that,\u201d said Wells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a winning combination. Wells\u2019 competitive dance teams have gone to National Finals the last two years and brought home national championship titles both years. Her cheer team came home as Camp Champs this summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While championship titles are nice, Wells dials the team into the bigger picture. She is forever coaching, whether at home, in the gym, or studio. She and her husband, Corey, have three children together. Their son, Brock, is 17; their older daughter, Summer-Grace, is a 13-year-old North Middle cheerleader; and their newest addition, Waverly, is almost a year old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wells said, \u201cMy daughter is a twotime All-American in cheer, who loves being involved with the school and is all about school spirit. Summer-Grace loves dress-up weeks, pep rallies, and game days, but I\u2019ve also tried to teach her the importance of being a leader in the school. I\u2019ve told her, \u2018You\u2019re not a skirt. You are here to be an example and a role model for your school.\u2019 She works hard, and that\u2019s what I expect from my kids and students. You\u2019re here to be the embodiment of school spirit, but you\u2019re also here to be a leader. That\u2019s what Heather taught all of her cheerleaders, and I have carried that into the way I coach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good leadership changes the reflection in the mirror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re not made like carbon copies. I pray that with God\u2019s help, I can encourage the girls to embrace their uniqueness and empower each other. Unfortunately, kids (and some adults) have a tendency to break each other down, but I hope to encourage them enough to break the cycle,\u201d she said. \u201cAt dance and cheer, we try to replace jealousy with recognition of each other\u2019s gifts. I pray they learn to appreciate and admire each other\u2019s gifts as well as their own. I want them to know they each have their gifts from God. I needed that reminder when I was their age,\u201d Wells said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bonds are still formed, and memories of a lifetime are still made with hard work and a healthy, positive self-image. Wells is at home holding the mirror and cheering on the students in her life. GN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FRIDAY NIGHT football is composed of many layers. It\u2019s a quilt of school colors, students, players, coaches, band members, and more. But cheerleaders are the thread binding it all and creating moments of a lifetime. The cheer squad carries more on their shoulders than their teammates in the next stunt \u2013 they carry school spirit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11191,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/goodnewsmags.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/DSC04145-1024x683.jpg\")
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