Cheer and Color Guard are conventionally stereotyped as a team of popular and athletic girls. At Cypress High, these three trailblazers are here to shatter those stereotypes and clear the way for future guard and cheer members. What would it be like to be the only ones of your gender in a gender stereotyped sport.

Cheerleading is often dramatized in TV shows as an only women’s sport, but Cypress Cheer Captain Tyler Liang believes that cheering is for anyone of any gender. “It’s a little nerve racking sometimes where I’m the only boy standing out with a different uniform. . .I just take a deep breath and realize that everybody on that team supports me and loves me and cares about me and that I’m not alone,” Liang explained. “My favorite thing is how close we are to each other and how there is always somebody in my corner.” 

Freshman Sawyer Woodrum and Junior Connor Shearin, the only two boys on the Colorguard team, collectively disagree with the cliché of Colorguard being seen as a sport for just girls. “I feel like we need to break the stigma that guard is only for girls because we are literally just spinning flags.” Woodrum protests “What makes that say that this sport is only for women?” Shearin finds the feeling of performing as if you’re “entering a realm and it’s bringing in a persona and you just perform and you’re just excited to be in there.”