With Former NFL Cheerleader Melanie Tatum

Melanie Tatum was a Baltimore Ravens cheerleader - not once, but twice - and she never tells anyone. I'm not even sure how I found out about it. She was a gymnast her whole life who thought she had no chance of making an NFL cheerleading roster but wanted to give it a try. So she taught herself to fly. Went to grad school. Then she taught herself to dance. And she made the cheer team both times on her first try.This episode is a conversation about a world most people know nothing about: what NFL cheerleading actually looks like from the inside. Melanie talks about the tryout process — hundreds of people show up, and at the end they send you down a hallway where your number is either on the wall or it's not. She talks about game day — rolling a full-size suitcase through Baltimore from Fed Hill in matching outfits six hours before kickoff, getting ready in a locker room with metal lockers and a laminated name tag on a magnet to make it feel homey. She talks about the pay, the rules (if a player gets on your elevator, you get off), and why she has a take on the cheerleader pay debate that might surprise you.Then the conversation goes somewhere neither of us planned. Melanie talks about losing a pregnancy, losing her spot on the team, and trying to figure out what God was doing in all of it. It's honest and real and it's the heart of the episode.We also talk about Baltimore, doing the Ray Lewis dance at her wedding, high school prom kings and homecoming court, and an unexpected shoutout to Switchfoot. This is At Least It'll Be a Good Story.Follow the show on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/atleastitsagoodpodcastSubscribe to the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW4wuIX4axfG8eMbrmrWgGw