Grace Dong, ’20, MA ’21, had been dancing since childhood, but performing in front of 68,500 fans was still a stretch goal. So before her May 2022 audition for the Gold Rush—the San Francisco 49ers cheerleading team—Dong sought tips from the one person who knew better than anyone how her style compared with the demands of dancing in the NFL: her former Dollie teammate Sydney Maly, ’20, MA ’20.
Maly, then a cheerleader for the Los Angeles Rams, suggested that Dong literally step it up. “I had to really practice picking up my feet versus gliding along the floor,” Dong says. “You want to think about almost stomping your feet because it looks a lot bigger on the football field when you have fans up in the 400 [section].”
Dong would pay it forward when a third Class of 2020 Dollie, Sam Loui, auditioned for the Philadelphia Eagles cheerleading team. During the 2023 season, three of the five Dollies from the 2017–18 school year cheered for America’s biggest sporting spectacle. “I really would not have thought it’s something that was even achievable without having seen them do it,” Loui says.
‘The experience is so elevated, so special; it’s something very few dancers get to experience in their lifetimes.’
Game days are electric, Dong says. “Every time I walk on that field, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the stage I’m dancing on,’ ” she says. “It’s so loud you cannot hear yourself think. That’s when it hits you: This isn’t a normal dance team. The experience is so elevated, so special; it’s something very few dancers get to experience in their lifetimes.”
It’s also ephemeral. While some cheer for a decade or more, dancers must audition each year. Moreover, the ex-Dollies are all pursuing professional graduate degrees. After four seasons, Maly hung up her pom-poms last spring, before entering law school at Pepperdine. Dong will follow suit to attend Harvard Business School in the fall. Meanwhile, Loui, a second-year law student at New York University, has become deft at doing homework on the Amtrak en route to and from Philadelphia.
She’s got at least one more goal in her sights. NFL cheerleaders don’t travel to away games, the Super Bowl being the exception. Maly went in 2022, Dong in 2024. If the Dollie pattern holds, Loui is on track for a trip to Levi’s Stadium in February 2026. We plan to cheer for her (with slightly lower leg kicks).
Sam Scott is a senior writer at Stanford. Email him at sscott3@stanford.edu.
