"Go!" "'Hoos!" "Go!" "'Hoos!"
In Scott Stadium, the chant rains down on opposing teams between every play and through every time out. And although Virginia fans can coordinate an orange-and-blue tie with a pair of khaki pants, they would be hard-pressed to coordinate a cheer that involves more than 60,000 voices. Instead, that job falls to the Virginia cheerleading team.
Cheerleading is not considered a varsity sport at Virginia, but the team receives funding from the athletic department that allows it to travel to away games with the team and keep performing at Virginia football and men's and women's basketball games. From open tryouts in April and September, the team is split into two squads, Orange and Blue, that divide the Virginia sporting schedule even as they learn the stunts, yells and cheers that make up their game day routines.
"Most of our female members cheered in high school," cheerleading coach Kelley Carter said. "But very few of them have co-ed stunting experience. The guys come in knowing very little. I've only had one or two in seven years that cheered in high school, so there's a lot of quick work that goes on behind the scenes."
Carter pointed out that while female tryouts have historically been more competitive than men's, the number of returning men will make upcoming tryouts much more competitive on both sides.
The Blue squad, which consists of seven couples, performs at football and men's basketball games. The Virginia sports promotions office provides Carter with a schedule of game activities so that the team knows when it's time to whip out the signs for a stadium-wide round of "Go 'Hoo's!" or keep up with the music from Hoovision. The team also coordinates with the Blue squad of the dance team that performs at the bottom of the Hill, for spirit activities during the game.
Though games are the marquee events, cheerleading at Virginia is a year-round job. Carter explained that funding for new uniforms and the traditional hospitality meal for visiting squads comes from the team's own fundraising.
"The cheerleaders do camps during the summer, including 18 this past summer," Carter said. "That means over 350 high school kids they worked with on stunting, cheers and that kind of stuff. We also sometimes do camps for local high school students who want to cheer in college, which helps with fundraising, too."
While the University of Maryland recently made their cheerleading team into a fully-funded scholarship sport to increase their Title IX compliance, Carter does not believe the same is in the cards at Virginia.
"We're still hoping to be able to establish some other kind of scholarship fund," she said. "Until then, we'll just keep cheering."
A Mascot's Work is Never Done
What's blue, orange, energetic and 15 degrees warmer than the rest of the stadium? He works the sidelines, pumping his fists into the air, performing one-armed pushups and begging a few extra decibels out of the crowd. He is the man in the mascot costume, Cav Man incarnate.
A mascot's duties don't simply begin and end with the referee's whistle in Scott Stadium. Instead, Cav Man is called upon to spread the Virginia spirit to the fans during pre-game festivities and other Virginia sporting events. The work is tiring: The costume includes a muscle body suit and tights that hold heat and humidity in until life inside Cav Man's cool exterior is almost unbearable.
"The first time I was inside the costume, for my first soccer game, I thought it was the most awful gig ever," the senior mascot said, speaking under condition of anonymity.
The costume this year is new, with a uniform more like the Cav Man on the Hoovision entrance video. The previous Cavalier costume was four years old, torn and stained, but the new look did not come cheap. Mascot costumes can range from $5,000 to $10,000, and take a severe beating. The new costume had a cape that barely survived the first home football game.
Wear and tear accounts for a notable absence on the Virginia sidelines this year: Lil' Hoo. Lil' Hoo was retired last year after his motor and battery became weak and rusted. The inflatable costume was torn and dirty and, as the senior mascot admitted, "a lot of people hated Lil' Hoo. They hated 'that blob.'"
The mascots don't take this sort of criticism personally, but for all the sweat that goes into games, the job is somewhat thankless. Even performing in front of thousands of fans doesn't buy fame. After all, The Golden Rules of Mascoting are twofold: Never reveal your identity and never, never talk while in the costume.
Instead the students who perform as Cav Man have to feed off the reaction of the crowd. Cav Man's antics are never scripted, nor is their any "mascot training" for new recruits. Tryouts usually consist of a trial run in the costume at a smaller sporting event like a soccer game, and if the prospective mascot has the moves and energy that impress the existing mascots, they become part of the mascot rotation.
Four male students currently share duties as Cav Man. Four years ago there was a female performer, but most of the time Cav Man is, in fact, a man.
On football Saturdays, the entire mascot corps arrives at Scott Stadium to suit up the first performer. Then Cav Man makes his first appearance of the day.
"Cav Man spends about an hour and a half before the game just pre-gaming," the senior mascot said. "He'll schmooze with fans, throw back a few beers and eat a few hot dogs
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