University cheerleading is an ever growing part of the cheerleading industry and something that we love to celebrate at Cheer From Head To Toe. Something that I believe is still a struggling part of University cheerleading though is how the sport is perceived from inside Universities. This lack of understanding is from other sports teams, prospective students, students union staff, non-sports students and even hopeful new members of the team and can leave teams with lots of issues to tackle throughout the year.

In my personal experience I really do not think the majority of people at my University understood what it was that we as a competitive cheerleading team did.

They thought it consisted of the stereotypical wearing small outfits, waving some pompoms, and chanting with some ‘girly drama’ thrown in – as shown by a lot of American teen movies.

This is understandable though if this is all you have ever seen of cheerleading. I think this is where one of the main issues lies, there was very limited exposure for other people within the university to actually learn and understand the hard work, planning and determination that goes into competitive cheerleading practices and competitions.

This is understandable though if this is all you have ever seen of cheerleading. I think this is where one of the main issues lies, there was very limited exposure for other people within the university to actually learn and understand the hard work, planning and determination that goes into competitive cheerleading practices and competitions.

One of the main issues I faced during my final year at University on the team was with kit. If you understand cheerleading, then you understand the importance of cheerleading kit. I’ve got a small story time for you now which I think demonstrated the lack of understanding of this issue and our sport as a whole from our University…

In my final year we had a slightly bigger team that in the previous years and this meant we did not have enough kit, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the kit we had, it was a classic kit however it was very old and could have done with a nice update anyway.

Due to how old it was we did not know where the kit had originally been made and neither did anybody in charge, so we were unable to go back to them and get some more made.

Our cheerleading committee saw this as a great opportunity to get a new updated kit and the team was very excited. The excitement wore off quite fast as the reality of trying to get a new kit set in. Our student union had just signed a deal with a kit provider for all sports teams at our University which meant ALL sports teams were supposed to have all kit supplied by them, however this was not a company that would normally make a cheerleading uniform. We immediately raised concerns about this and had meetings to discuss if the vision for our new kit was possible. It was heavily suggested that we could just have basically the same kit as the netball team, after all, it’s a top and skirt, how is that any different? As you can imagine a netball kit is not what we were after as a competitive cheerleading team, eventually it was agreed by our cheerleading committee, the Student’s Union and the new kit providers that they were unable to provide what we needed and we were allowed to look elsewhere. The point to this story is that as a cheerleading team we felt overlooked and unimportant to our University as they had clearly done no research into our sport and the support we needed in order to be a successful team.

I wanted to compare my experience with Cheer From Head to Toe’s Caroline’s experience to see how things have or haven’t developed over the years. With my time at university being a good few years after Caroline’s,

it was interesting to see we still faced a lot of the same issues and challenges. Having the correct space and mats to train with was a main one for both of us.

Caroline said

“The University didn’t understand why we needed mats and a large space to train and often double booked us.” They would give us small rooms to train in which weren’t suited for us to be able to train properly.”

I was lucky in that we had a solid booking of the sports hall for our team to train by the time I got to my University, but we still had the same issue with mats and the University didn’t understand why we needed more mats/better equipment in order to be able to train safely and effectively. We had 2 of those small blue mats you used to use in PE in school per stunt group and that was it.

We ended up spending our own money or taking money out of our budget to hire out a local cheerleading gym floor to practice on closer to competition. Another really important point raised by

Caroline was the battle her and her team took on to get Cheerleading changed from a society to a sport. She said, “We fought really hard for this, but it basically took our whole time at Uni to get it changed, getting it changed meant we got certain rights and meant we could be part of things at the University.”

Another issue I mentioned earlier on, I believe, is the way other sports teams perceive our sport.

There is so much opportunity for other sports teams to showcase what they do around Universities, with ‘BUCS Wednesdays’ the majority of teams will have matches/competitions pretty much weekly meaning that supporters, friends and staff can tag along and watch them put their training to work.

Don’t get me wrong, this is also a great opportunity for University cheerleading match day teams to get great exposure and show what they work on, however competition teams are left again unable to show everyone what they do.

Many don’t understand why competition teams can’t do half time match performances – not understanding the health and safety risks of performing dangerous stunts and tumbles on grass, AstroTurf or a wooden floor.

I spoke to a student from a smaller University who wanted to remain anonymous, unfortunately their experience has also been a less than positive one. She spoke about some of the main issues they faced.

They had a big issue with students actually on the team, she explained that the team was made up of a few people which had already done cheer before and had a love for the sport, and others that just wanted to try it out – but not all for the right reasons. There were a few which did not understand the sport and just wanted to fit into that American cheer movie stereotype to gain ‘popularity’. This created cliques within the team and left some member of the team feeling left out and unwelcome. She discussed that these students were then also the main members of the team that went on socials and interacted with other teams which subsequently spread the stereotype of cheerleading we are trying to move away from around their University.

I think it can be quite a shock for some new students when they actually learn how much hard work goes into the sport and how serious the sport is, this can lead to students dropping out or being removed from teams. Spreading as much information during the build up to a new year is a great way to avoid this, sharing videos and information on your team’s social media, talking to students at freshers fairs and holding taster sessions really helps new members to understand if this a sport they will enjoy.

So how can we change these perceptions?

We did a few different things which helped the perception of our sport begin to change and we had fun whilst doing them. One of our favourites which became an annual thing was a joint session with the rugby union team. We organised it so that they came along to one of our practices and tried it out, and we went along to one of their practices and tried to swap throwing people for throwing a rugby ball. It was a really enjoyable thing for both teams and increased understanding and appreciation of both sports. We transferred our skills to impress them with some strong line outs and came away happy that the opinion of our sport had started to change from another sports team. This is something which I would really recommend, do it with as many sports teams as possible and have fun in the process.

Inviting people along to watch you at competitions as well will really give them a better understanding of the sport as a whole, getting to see all the different university teams in competition, performing to their absolute best on the mat. In my final year we had a small number of friends come along from our university and support us at the competition and it was amazing for them to be able to experience what we had been training for alongside us and really appreciate the effort we put in. Plus, it’s always an added bonus when you have more people cheering you on at the front of the mat.

The final thing which I think is a great idea to really show everyone at University what the cheerleading team does is to show them. Sports awards are an annul event at Universities and a night to celebrate the achievements of the year. If you have a video of your routine from a competition, this is the perfect opportunity to show it off, ask your sports awards organisers if they can dedicate a couple of minutes to share the video, this way all the sports teams and staff will have a glimpse of what we do.

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