East High varsity cheerleader, senior Hannah Borrell, is breaking both cheerleading and female stereotypes as she writes a fantasy novel in her free time to dive into her creativity. Borrell originally came up with the idea in her creative writing class during the spring of 2023. She wrote a short story for one of her assignments, and Mr. Hamersky encouraged her to expand on it. Originally, Borrell didn’t like the idea enough to continue with it.

Instead, she tried to pursue other story ideas, but hit writer’s block soon into it. Sometime later, Borrell had a dream about the short story she wrote, and that was enough to convince her to pursue the idea. She started over the summer of 2023, and now during the fall semester of her senior year, she’s still going strong. Her fantasy literature teacher, Mr. Rosenberger, offered to have the class read and review excerpts of the book if she could finish it before the end of the semester since he appreciates her motivation and involvement in her academic community.

“I had a student who was a cheerleader, about ten years ago here at East,” Mr. Rosenberger said. “She conveyed a story to the class about how she had done really well on an AP test, and the teacher had said literally to her face ‘Wow, I can’t believe a cheerleader did so well on this AP test’.”

It was a very degrading moment for that student, and it’s something that many others will go through.

“I think that it shows that people sometimes hold onto old stereotypes and are still nurtured by our culture, and sometimes that’s how it’s conveyed,” Mr. Rosenberger said. “That said, Hannah is an example of how we can’t hold onto those stereotypes, and that you know we need to think more open-mindedly for everyone. And so, for Hannah to do all the things she’s doing, including writing a book, I think is a great example of why stereotypes are absolutely stupid.”

Borrell herself has also been subjected to treatment based on such stereotypes.

“I have had some issues with cheerleader stereotypes, like the face people give me when I say I wanna do geology in the future,” Borrell said.

Borrell is about five chapters in and planning to write 13 more. To share her book with the world, she also plans to donate some copies to public libraries around town. Borrell’s goal is to take down stereotypes one page at a time.