Over the next few weeks LamarCardinals.com will be speaking with several members of the Lamar University Athletics staff that don't get much attention. These people work behind the scenes, and often their contributions go unnoticed by the general public. It's our hope that after reading each of these articles Cardinal fans will come to appreciate just how important each person is to Big Red's success.

Our next profile focuses on Kelsey Baden, the cheer coordinator for Lamar University. She sat down with LamarCardinals.com for a short interview which follows below:

What do you do at Lamar?
I'm the cheer coordinator for Lamar. I handle all aspects of cheerleading – practices, gameday operations, travel, budgets, scholarships and I also serve as their chauffeur. A big part of my job is skill building, as most coordinator's do. Cheer is a very dangerous sport, so to be able to build upon a skill you have to perfect a certain skill. You always try and make sur that your team is starting in one place and ending in another with their skills.
  
How did you get started in this career field?
I've cheered since I was about eight years old. Unlike with most sports, you don't start out as a little kid and say, "I want to grow up to do that professionally," – in most sports that is a strong possibility if you work hard enough, but with cheer that isn't the case. From cheering when I was young to knowing some people in college, I happen to know someone who worked at St. Louis University and they needed a new cheer coach. At the time, I had just stopped cheering for the St. Louis Rams. I was trying to finish up college and figuring out what I wanted to do after that and I started coaching there when I was 21.
 
What does a typical day look like for you?
We have practices first thing in the morning, which includes training and skill building. We do a lot of team building and mentoring meetings, so some days are dedicated to that. I also spend a part of my day working on budgets, schedule for upcoming week, if there is a game figuring out which uniform to wear, things like that. Just like any other aspect of athletics we spend a good part of our day trying to get better.
 
If you had to explain your job to someone who knew nothing about college athletics, what would you compare it to?
Honestly, I would compare it to a coach of any other team. Not to get too technical but we input new skills and we work on those until we have them down, so we can input more skills. Like every other sport, you do have your training process and it's not as easy as it looks. It is very hard work, and we have cardio work that has to be done. We have to get our workouts in because on gameday you have to be able to stand up in the heat and cheer for a full four-hour game with a smile on your face, and act like you're not hurt even though you might get dropped or something like that. You have to be tough to cheer.
 
We give them workouts to do on their own, and they're required to do 1-2 hours twice a week. Once a week, we have a team workout. We are a team, but your bases are going to have different workouts than your flyers, and the guys will have different workouts than girls. When you add everything up, we have about 8-10 hours of practices each week not including games.
 
What are some of the challenges you face, and what are the rewards?
Challenges are similar for every team. As a group, you grow a strong bond, but we are with each other for nine months, so two-thirds of the way through the year you run into situations where kids are tired of being around each other. It happens but you work through it and move on. A lot of our kids are roommates so they're around each other a lot during the year.
 
There are so many rewards to this job, but in my opinion seeing the product at the end of the year is a reward. Looking back to where you started and where you are at the end makes it worth it. In addition to that, having an athlete come up to you and saying thank you and to see them appreciate each other is really rewarding. Probably the biggest reward you receive comes on graduation day when you get to see them cross the stage with their diploma. All of that combined that is very rewarding.

Is there anything about cheerleading that people don't know that you think they should?
I think people know that it's tough, but they may not know exactly how hard it is. Like with most sports you can't just come in off the street and do what needs to be done to be successful. The strength and endurance it takes to do this is too much for a lot of people to handle. There also has to be a great deal of trust when you're allowing someone to throw you 10 feet in the air and you're trusting them to catch you.
 
Fun Fact Sheet about Kelsey Bader

• Birthplace: Reno, Nev.
• College: Webster University
• Experience in College Athletics: 4 years as a St. Louis Rams Cheerleader, 1 year at UT-Tyler, 2 years as coach at St. Louis University and 2 years at Southern Illinois.
• Favorite Sports Team: Lamar University, of course!
• Favorite Phrase: I really like Harry Potter, so any line from Harry Potter would be considered my favorite phrase.