This video was originally broadcast on Herd TV on January 19, 2022.

[TRANSCRIPT]

Being in high school is hard. The stress of fitting in, peer pressure, self-image—they can make us all wear masks, masks that can’t be seen.

Ian Hill knows this all too well.

“I’ve been growing up and I’ve been maturing to realize that opinions don’t matter anymore and you do whatever you want to do and whatever makes you happy,” Hill said.  “You go ahead and fulfill your dreams.”

Ian Hill is a sophomore at Carlisle High School and the only male cheerleader at CHS.

“Honestly, what interested me about cheer was it looked fun and I was curious to try something new.”

Trying it meant trying out.

“I think [when] he started as a cheerleader, he was like joking around, about doing jumps,” teammate Ava Sherrer said, “so then we put him on the football sideline sometimes.”

Coach Mariana Machin added, “And he wanted to learn how to stunt and actually do cheer so we actually had him do a couple of stunts and he did really freaking well. Yeah, so we’re like hmm maybe let’s become an official cheerleader.”

Like any good cheerleader, he knows that support is important.

“All my friends and family support me and they congratulate me each time I do a new stunt,” Hill said.

And that support has made him fearless.

“I have met a few people that have wanted to do cheer but they didn’t want their friends to think of them as weird or they didn’t want their family to call them certain names because of the stereotypes,” Hill said.

Ian has learned that people will always have something to say no matter what so do what makes you happy.

“Opinions don’t affect me at all,” Hill said. “I just brush them off and if somebody has something negative to say about me, I just look at what I’ve done great and I just move on.”

“He always positively impacts the team,” Sherrer said. “He always is like ‘Let’s go again’ or laughs.”

“He has like the best personality,” Machin said. “He’s always so encouraging to people. He’s like the wall of energy that everybody needs sometimes, so it’s great yeah.”

And he wants to share that energy with you.

“I feel that my story shows that you can do whatever you want, no matter the stereotypes,” Hill said, “and I think that anybody that really wants to do something should go ahead and do that. You can do anything you want to as long as you put your mind to it.”