Victoria Kalina On Walking Away From Dallas Cowboys Cheerleading

Transcript

00:00What was your decision? Obviously the viewers saw you. Those meetings are brutal. It's fascinating

00:04to go in with like, return the... It's scary. Return the uniform left or right. And like,

00:09one, you're trying to kind of comprehend left, right, what are we doing? And then

00:12putting it down. Putting it on right. Putting it on right. Like, do you make the right... I feel

00:16like someone accidentally... Yeah, I put it on the right, wrong, the right direction on the rack.

00:19Somebody put it on the wrong rack, like it was whatever. So that's a lot. It's almost,

00:22it's like an exit interview for a job. It is. Right. So you at that point were kind of unsure.

00:28Then you decided you were going to try out. Then obviously we fast forward a couple months later

00:32and you decided not to do that. What'd we miss? What happened? Okay. So initially I had gone in

00:38with the intentions of hanging it up on the, yes, I'm re-auditioning. Okay. Like I had to,

00:43had my mind set in stone on that. I already had plans on, I had my solo song all planned out. I

00:50had my choreographer all planned out and I was going to fly out to meet with him and get my

00:54routine set. I had all of the things, like my costume was designed by me. Like I was ready.

00:59Do you guys pay for like all that yourself obviously to then prepare for the audition?

01:02Yes. Also probably a lot. Um, so yes. Just in general, like that's a lot to plan to pay for.

01:08It's kind of like pageantry. Like you have to pay for your own ball gown, all the things.

01:11Okay. So you had it all planned out and what happened? And I didn't want to test them,

01:18but I just wanted to see if we were like on the same page because from growing up around it,

01:23I've always known and have learned that you can sometimes overstay on the squad. And I never

01:31wanted to do that. Like that wasn't who, what my goal was never my intention. And so I just wanted

01:35to make sure that they were like, yes, we want you back. Yeah. Especially as a fifth year, you

01:39kind of, I don't know, in a sense, almost not have earned that. But I mean, you spent four years on

01:46there. You want to have that almost like reassurance, like, yes, we still want you here.

01:50Like, yes, you're still valuable. And obviously in the meeting, y'all saw five minutes of it.

01:58It was a minute. It was an hour and a half. Oh, wow. Of a meeting. That's a long time. It was a

02:02long time. And it was just as like what everybody else saw on Netflix, just longer. Like there

02:12wasn't any missed complimentary anything. Um, but I think since I wasn't hearing what I wanted to

02:22hear, I ultimately was going like, well, I'm just going to hang it up on no now, but I didn't ever

02:27want to make, I never want to make a rash decision. It makes sense. And so I wanted to sit

02:31on it. I wanted to get my mom's opinion. And after talking about it with her, she was like, no, like

02:36as a fifth year going into auditions, I felt like my place was on the team was threatened.

02:43And as a fifth year, I know leadership is not guaranteed, but you want to go in like feeling

02:48cloud nine. You can lead these, these other teammates that are below you. The new ones,

02:54you can lead them into. Yeah. It's like, it's supposed to be almost like a, like a victory

02:59laugh. The celebration tour. And I'm just like, and what I find very hard to kind of like still

03:06sit in is that they were really shocked by that because I feel like if anyone in any career

03:13position, having four years under your belt, like you want to see where you're going, you want to

03:17see growth. Right. Um, and I just wanted to put, decided to put my time and energy elsewhere.