I guess you can say that I knew absolutely nothing when I first joined the Ateneo Blue Babble Battalion. Maybe, in some deep corner of my mind, I harnessed a certain prejudice against the cheerleader; I never said it out loud or gave it serious thought, but somehow, it’s like I assumed that the job was an easy one. You smile a lot, jump a lot, and wear a short skirt. How hard can that possibly be?

But a few months after making it into the team, all my thoughts about a breezy lifestyle had gone out the window. There were endless training hours, rigorous routines, high-risk stunts, and serious injuries. Never in my life did I imagine that such sacrifice and commitment was needed for a team that, sadly, was never really taken seriously. Nowadays I just laugh at all the critics who refuse to call us athletes. We are athletes. You may not see that now, but we are more than short skirts and pretty smiles.

Maybe it’s because we make it all look so easy. What a lot of people don’t know is that we spend an average of about four hours a day at training, working on stunts that could kill us and memorizing routines that could drive us all crazy. But we do it, and we do it as perfectly as we can. We go home afterwards, not to idle around, but rather, to catch up on academic schoolwork and other tasks we have to do. Each day we do this all over again, but we never get tired of it. We’re never without smiles or laughter, energy or strength. We all have exceptionally good grades for people who barely have time to read or rest, and what’s even more amazing is that many of the girls on our team are the most beautiful, most fresh-faced people I know, despite the fact that they have less than six hours of sleep almost everyday. But that’s just how it is, and we will not let any letdown faze us.

More importantly, we are more than just a team – we are a family; a huge, colorful, and happy one. There are more than a hundred members in the Ateneo Blue Babble Battalion, but every face is familiar to each of us. There is no doubt that each and every one of us will recognize a fellow teammate when outside of training, whether it be a member of the Cheerdancers, the Lifters, the Battalion, or the Band. We know each other well, because we all have a common goal. The Blue Babble Battalion lives to cheer for Team Ateneo, and we will cry our lungs out just to show the entire community exactly that. Together, we will fight to the death to fulfill it.

We are the Blue Babble Battalion, and we’ve prepared well enough, because we want this year to be our year. We have worked well and hard for this golden opportunity to prove ourselves, so please support us. This year, the glory is for us to achieve, and we hope that you, our Ateneo family, can be part of it. Join us. Cheer for the cheerleaders.

Eleonor Dyan R. Garcia (II AB MEco) is currently a member of the Blue Babble Battalion Cheerdancers.