A new cheerleading club has attracted 60 potential members, an unusually high number for a student organization on campus.

Cheerleading Club Pres-ident Abby Loftus said she hopes the squad eventually will perform at the college’s men’s and women’s basket-ball home games.

“My goal is to just honestly make it something enjoyable for the girls on the team, but also something that’s enjoyable for, like, the people that attend the games,” Loftus, a first-year kinesiology student, said. “Great school spirit … a fun environment at those games, because I know really having a cheer team in high school brought much more of a crowd to those games, and so I’m hoping that maybe it will do the same thing here.”

Loftus started the cheerleading club with Vice President Annaliz Gonzalez and Treasurer Sophina Nunes to offer students—even those with no experience—the chance to cheer.

The team will not be affiliated with AACC Athletics. The officers unveiled the club at the Student Involvement Fair in September, when 60 potential members, including a number of male students, signed up.

Approximately 15 women showed up to the team’s first meeting a week later. “It shows … just [how] cheer brings people together,” Loftus said. “It’s like a community that not only strengthens the people that are in it, but it, like, brings people out to the games, and it engages with those people,and it makes that kind of environment more entertaining and more exciting.”

Loftus cheered for four years at Archbishop Spalding High School, where her coach told her AACC did not have a cheer team.

Loftus said she started the club because she didn’t want to stop cheering. “I wasn’t ready to give up” the sport, Loftus said. “I think cheer helped me a lot, like, to get out of my comfort zone.”

Gwendolyn Johnson, one of the club’s faculty advisers, said the student officers’ passion influenced her to become a part of the team. “They are really excited, and they have a vision … and that right there is enough to make me want to be an adviser and to support the vision,” Johnson, AACC’s internship program coordinator, said. Johnson, who said she used to be a “cheer coach parent,” said she is “invested in student engagement.”

Loftus said she wants to give students who cheered in high school a chance to continue and newcomers who are interested in the opportunity to try it out. “I just want to make it, like, a safe place for people to learn and grow,” Loftus said.

Gonzalez, a first-year homeland security management student, agreed, saying she is “excited” to have so many people who are “willing to just jump in there.”