“Resilience” was the word of the year for the 2024-25 Panther Spirit Squad. After a season full of roadblocks, the student-run cheerleading and dance teams ended the school year celebrating milestone achievements at The College Classic’s 2025 nationals. The cheer team won the national championship in the All-Girl Cheer Game-Day Spirit Showdown at the April event. The dance team placed ninth in the Division 2 Jazz category.
The Spirit Squad cheerleading and dance teams are made up of both game-day performance groups and audition-only competition groups. The organization was established as a club sport in 2022 after cheerleading and dance were separated from varsity athletics. Since then, its members have worked tirelessly to rebuild their teams under student leadership.
This season, senior Erin Brasher, the organization’s 2024-25 president, said her team dealt with struggles to find funding and from an unexpected change in leadership, forcing them into last-minute changes regarding which competition they were attending. Still, they managed to raise enough money to send both of their teams to compete.
“The Spirit Squad is built on resilience,” Brasher said. “It was built on the idea that just because things are not under our control, that doesn’t mean they can stop us from doing what we love, together. I think that this year really proved that.”
The organization was also recognized in the university’s Student Leader Awards, where it was named Recreational Organization of the Year for the third year in a row and earned a Silver Campus Service Award. Brasher was named Recreational President of the Year, and team member Audrey Eley ‘25 was named Recreational Secretary of the Year.
“Our mission at its core – being a safe space for people to cheer or dance – is so much more valuable than how we do at competition, even if we did have a great season,” Brasher said. “Knowing that everything that we went through this year wasn’t in vain reminds us why we’re here in the first place.”
