In many, if not all, of my past blogs, I aimed to help people understand what a typical Saturday at one of the biggest football schools in the world looks like for a college cheerleader. While many of the posts have been somewhat similar in regard to the overall topic, football games, I wanted to take this blog to talk about something super different. I know you all are aware by now of what weekends look like for my team and I, but I have never really talked about a typical week schedule. In the beginning of the day, I am just a normal student like everyone else, however past about 5pm my day takes a turn and becomes drastically different.

After a busy football Saturday, we receive the biggest blessing in the entire world- a day off. Sundays are pretty much our only day off the entire week, so it is a great time to catch up on homework, do laundry, and honestly, just take a break from cheerleading and exercising before Monday comes around again.

Monday-Thursday, we have normal practice. 6:30pm-9pm in the Multisport building. For the most part, this is pretty consistent, unless there is some sort of event which I will get more into later. When we arrive at practice, the first thing that we do is roll out the mats and this job is so tedious. The mats are huge and so hard to move because they do not slide on the turf, so it takes about 4 girls just to open up one and there are 7. After the mats are out, we all change into our cheer shoes and patiently wait until the clock strikes 6:30.

As soon as its 6:30, we all get up and run two laps around the building then go right into stretching. After stretching, we typically gather at the front of the mat to discuss the weekend and then what practice will consist of for that day. After talking, we break, and all the girls spread out on the mat to do back flips. As soon as our coach starts counting we all have to do synchronized back flips, 5 total, and if someone doesn’t go, falls, or touches their hands to the ground, it doesn’t count and we do them again. Some days are really great, and we only have to do 5, but there have been multiple occasions where we would have to do 10, and it gets hard.

Directly after doing our backflips, we go to the corners of mat where we do running tumbling (series’ of multiple flips in one turn). We usually take about 3 turns each, unless we got in trouble for some reason and then we just keep on going.

After all of our tumbling is done we break off into teams (coed and all girl). I am on the coed team and I am so thankful for that. I love me team and we are all so close- and also the boys throw you higher which I personally think is way more fun. For the rest of practice, we work on stunting and pyramids, essentially the stuff you see at games and events every week. For the most part, practice is pretty much the same, unless it’s a Wednesday because on Wednesdays we start every practice with a timed mile run.

While typically every team member will be at practice for the full 2 and a half hours, there are exceptions to this- one of them being cheering at a basketball or hockey game. Hockey, basketball, and volleyball are the only other ports we cheer for, and while they are fun, none of them measure up to football.

I know what you’re thinking, cheerleaders? For hockey? Do you cheer on the ice? And the answer to all of those questions is yes we cheer for hockey and no we are not on the ice. Hockey is actually very simple to cheer for and we are actually located above the student section. The only thing we really have to do at hockey games is dance and do small promotional things like Treat in Your Seat.

At basketball, however, we do so much. Almost every timeout we do some sort of stunt or dance in the middle of the court. Basketball is really fun, especially when there is a lot of people so hopefully as the seasons goes on more people will show up.

Typically, in a week for me, I would attend 3 practices and one game of some sort. While we technically get Fridays off, sometimes you will be assigned to cheer another game. If I am not cheering a game though, many of us cheerleaders will get together and drive to a cheer gym just outside of town to practice even more.

Throughout the week, my life is pretty busy with cheer and I devote so much time that I know other people are unaware of. My team and I put so much work into what we do and many people do not understand the amount of time and dedication it takes to be a college athlete of any kind.