Jon, had he been there, wouldn't have recognized any of them as cheerleaders prior to that day...or in many cases, recognized them at all.
Linda looked them over as she took them through the warmup. Rachel, who she'd talked into picking cheerleading over girl's soccer as a sport, was hyper-competitive and even now, with her team, was trying to outdo all of them. Linda had put her in charge of making sure Kelly didn't start daydreaming again about whichever boy she was thinking about this week.
In fact, that was a similar story with many of the girls on the squad. Linda or one of her most loyal friends had talked many of them into joining. She'd convinced Gillian that it would look good on her college applications. Gillian was very much a girl next door type, but was definitely more focused on her classes. Linda had taken her under her wing and convinced her to pay more attention to how she looked and to get herself some contacts. Taking the lesson from her father, she'd either identified winners or identified people who, with a little work, would be winners. And when some girl who thought that cheerleading was competing to see who the biggest slut was, or getting the hottest football player wanted to join, Linda made sure they didn't get very far.
While Sarah's ambition seemed to be to become a copy of her mom, Linda would probably be running the family business someday.
