When people think of Cheerleading, the image is usually of an airheaded girl with pig tails, wearing a skirt that’s way too small. They think it’s an activity that primarily involves shaking pom poms and shaking booties. While, granted, some shaking is involved, there’s so much more to it than that. Cheerleading is intensely athletic, and it is a massive time commitment, for almost no reward or recognition, and that makes it infinitely frustrating for us cheerleaders.

Cheerleading is hard work. It involves a strength that is unique only to cheerleaders. We lift people the same size as us above our heads. It’s incredibly demanding on your body. When people think of cheerleaders just shaking their pom poms, it’s personally insulting to the true athleticism that each cheerleader possesses. You could never understand the training you have to go through to be able to flip your body over itself and land on your feet from a standing position, so please don’t degrade us by debasing our skills to simply shaking our butts.

Cheerleading consumes all of your time. Our tryouts happen in April, and it is nonstop work until the end of March. We practice all summer long to be ready for Football Season in the Fall. Throughout the school year, we cheer at every home football, volleyball, men’s basketball, and women’s basketball game. Somehow in between juggling all of these sporting events, we find time to practice just as much, if not more than every other sport. Not to mention that we also have required lifting in the athletic weight room, just like all of the other sports.

If that’s not enough, we have to make appearances at almost every event on campus. From Staff Appreciation Lunches to Student Welcome Events. To add some insult to it, we even have to appear at fundraisers that benefit every sport in the athletic department… except Cheerleading. Sometimes we are the only athletes required to be there, and we are the only ones not benefiting from it.

On top of that, we still have to figure out how to fit school into the equation! Which is especially difficult because, with all of the time we put in, we still don’t get priority class registration like the rest of the student-athletes.

But with all of the time we put in, guess what… we aren’t an NCAA sport, so we don’t get funded. No money means we have to pay for our gear out of our own pocket! We devote most of our time to doing this and we have to pay for our own gear.

The most frustrating part is that devoting this much time and effort is that no one seems to appreciate it. It’s a thankless sport, and it’s vastly underrated.

However, even with all of this frustration built up inside of us, we still show up to every game with a big smile on our face, ready to work hard and put on a show. So next time you see a cheerleader down on the field, give them a little appreciation. They won’t be used to it, but it might help them remember why they love the sport deep down… Way deep down.