Cheerleading... It's not that easy

I am a member of the Appalachian State Cheerleading team. I am a junior, so this is my third year of being on the cheerleading team. I think that cheering on a college team is a lot more difficult and time consuming than most people would think. I was a gymnast for 10 years, and almost all gymnasts hold those stereotypes about cheerleaders: they're dumb, they can't count past eight, they aren't even the slightest bit athletic, and they only care about their hair and makeup. But then when I couldn't do gymnastics anymore because of back injuries, I decided to give cheerleading a go. I mean, how hard could it be? Much harder than I ever thought. I did competitive cheerleading for Charlotte Allstars, and I did high school cheerleading too. Still though, that didn't prepare me for college cheerleading. On top of college classes just being hard, we work out at 6am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. We also practice on MWFs at night, where two hours is dedicated to stunting/tumbling/pyramids, and the last hour is dedicated to running and conditioning. Then, we cheer in football games on Saturdays (9 hours total for us), volleyball games during the week, and we make appearances at fundraisers and events. During basketball season we cheer for doubleheaders on Thursdays and Saturdays (6 hours total), and wrestling matches too. During the Spring we also host a lot of fundraisers, camps, and open practices. Try outs are coming up soon (April), so we are really looking for new people currently! I guess the biggest thing I learned from my own experience is that just because cheerleading is supposed to look easy, does not mean it is! That's the art of it really. Defying gravity, doing skills that others could never do, and making it look like a walk in the park.