Cheerleading | Lifting Penn Athletics

With both Penn basketball teams still winless after fifteen games, fans might be surprised that a playoff team has been performing right before their eyes during each game they’ve attended at the Palestra.

Men’s basketball coach Glen Miller’s squad may still be a year or two away from a championship bid, but Penn cheerleading will travel to the Universal Cheerleading Association Nationals in Orlando, Fla., on Jan, 15.

“There are about 100 teams that go, with a couple different divisions,” head coach Joe Neary said. “You do your routine, which is two minutes and thirty seconds long, and then depending on the scores, if you have to go to finals they’ll break you down and advance you through.”

To make the tournament, the team had to submit a skills tape — a presentation of all the team’s stunts, pyramids and tumbles ­— and a crowd tape, containing video footage of the team cheering at different events. The team gets evaluated based both on their skill and on crowd interaction.

Qualifying for the first time since 1997, the cheerleading team has finally put together the experience and athleticism needed to make the tournament.

The team’s success comes despite what Neary sees as little recognition around campus.

“They really are ambassadors for the University of Pennsylvania, and I think they’re a little bit under-appreciated,” Neary said.

“These are athletes that go all season long. They cheer for basketball, [they] cheer for football, and they aren’t recognized as much as they should be.”

“We practice two to three times a week but it feels like we’re doing something for cheerleading everyday,” said team Captain, senior Melissa Hershman.

“We have a lot of games to cover but it’s a really great experience,” Hershman added.

While the squad’s performance this year has surely flown under the radar, Neary won’t be able to play the “overlooked” card for long.

As one of the few Penn teams to be televised on an ESPN network this season, the cheer squad has a chance to garner more national attention than any other sport.

Neary is confident the team will be ready.

“We’ve gone to the UCA camp for the last three summers, and this year we have the most amount of people that have been there before, that have built up the kind of knowledge of what [the judges] are looking for.”

So how is the squad expected to perform?

“Right now a couple of the top [schools] are Hofstra and University of Louisiana at Monroe, and actually Villanova is ranked 7th right now,” Neary said. “We’d like to crack the top 10, make it to finals and give Villanova a run for their money.”

Only time will tell how far Penn cheerleading can advance, but for the first time in over a decade, all eyes will be on them.

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