University Cheerleading in Australia - What is it really like?

August 16, 2018

University Cheerleading in Australia - What is it really like?

My 2016 Pom team (I'm front left).

So you want to be a cheerleader, but aren't sure what it's all about? "Is it even a real thing?" you're probably thinking, especially in Australia! Well.. as you can see by my photos...it is, and hopefully I can dispel any of the myths or your misconceptions around cheerleading. I can only base my insights on my own experience at my WA university in my level 1-3 teams, but I think other universities experience similar situations. Ultimately, I'm so glad I became a cheerleader, it has given me so many benefits since I joined in 2015.

Curtin Clubs Day 2015 (I am on the right).

1) We cheer for sports teams

Firstly, we don't stand on the sidelines of football, basketball or any other sporting matches waving pom-poms and chanting. In Australia, university sports are more social and casual, not massive events like in America. I am so envious of that part of their culture, it looks like so much fun and really fosters a collegiate spirit and community. My experience of university sports has been a quiet affair attended by some die-hard fans, ex-members and supportive mums having a yarn while the players spend their Friday evening having a kick around. We tried to perform during half-time at a soccer game once...it was very awkward and lacked the fanfare you see in movies or on Friday Night Lights. The pitches are also wet given the sports are played during the winter season so that was a dangerous environment to be flipping and throwing people in!

2) We're super popular on campus

We try and recruit more members because we are often struggling to make up numbers on teams...unfortunately many uni students either don't have time to, can't afford to, don't know they can, or simply can't get themselves organized enough to be a cheerleader! We advertise on social media often, but twice a year we walk around a university clubs event hand out flyers and showing our stuff to try and entice the the next Torrance Shipman into joining one of our teams...but mostly guys just want to take photos of us and the girls get disappointed when they find out we're not a netball team. If anything, we're the obscure nerds on campus no one takes seriously. But we don't care because we love what we do...and we're hardly on campus in our uniforms anyway.

3) We're all really skinny and hot

While I think all my teammates are absolutely gorgeous, we're just regular girls and guys. Fit comes in all shapes and sizes and we're not elite athletes, just university students trying to keep fit while having some fun. We only train once or twice a week, with some of us practicing more outside of that time. Half of the Hollywood starlets cheerleading is based off wouldn't be able to lift their teammates with those skinny arms anyway.

Here I am flying at one of my first practices ever.

4) We are all bitchy, superficial bimbos

Of course, this one isn't true. Sure all teams (especially ones predominately women, I'll admit) have their squabbles and differences, but we're not openly rude to each other. We also all come from tertiary education, so we should be reasonably smart! We have athletes from many disciplines, including theater, commerce, nursing, sports science, teaching, engineering and more. I joined to get to know other people from my university with a common interest. I was finding it hard to make friends in my course and maintain those friendships outside of class as I used to live far away from campus.

5) We are super competitive

Sometimes we don't even have other teams competing in our division! There are only a couple of other university teams in the state and they don't all compete at every, or even the same competitions...we need to sort that out I think. We just rock up, do our best, and review the score sheet to try and improve for next time! We usually compete at three state competitions a year and this year we are even travelling to the Gold Coast to compete in a national competition. Who knows, we may even make it to Worlds some day.

6) All the guys on the team are gay

Nearly all the guys meet their next girlfriend at cheer, and I don't see anything gay about lifting chicks.

Competing in 2015, I am on the right of the front right group.

7) Its not a sport

Flips, strength and teamwork...seems like a sport to me, and the Olympic committee for that matter! I can't wait for the 2020 Olympics where cheer will be included for the first time!

8) We actually cheer

We don't cheer at games as of the moment, and only some competitions require us to have a chant.

9) We can all flip and dance really well

Most of us are beginners or casual athletes and ex-dancers in the lower divisions, but we're always looking to improve or tumbling skills. We have some teammates thought that can really move across the mat though!

2017 competition, I am second from the left.

There are many more myths I could bust! Please let me know if you enjoyed this post and if you have any thoughts or other questions, I'm bound to do more posts about cheer in the future :) Thanks for reading...be sure to check out more cheer photos below!