“Are you ready for Penn State football?”

Jordan Frank was introduced to cheerleading by a friend during his sophomore year at Penn State, and after walking on to the team, the current senior has climbed the ranks to become Penn State cheer’s mic man.

It’s a position he never saw himself being in, but with the privilege of pumping up over 110,000 fans at Beaver Stadium and traveling the country, Frank is grateful his college experience took a turn in this direction.

Frank has been through an athletic journey that he described as “wonky,” including 17 years of running track, high school basketball, and almost walking on to Penn State’s football team. However, the ultimate decision to join the cheerleading team was one he’s happy he made.

“My sophomore year, one of my boys was on the team and introduced me to what cheer was. I started talking to the coaches after that, and after I had decided that I wanted to end my track career and had a few conversations here and there, I was able to walk on to the cheer team,” Frank said. “Ever since then, it’s been an incredible experience. It’s been fun. I have no complaints.”

The choice to give up track was not an easy one for Frank to make, but his body was telling him it was time. Despite that, he didn’t want to stop being active, so he was interested in walking on to a different Penn State team.

While becoming a running back or wide receiver for the Nittany Lions was at the top of his list, Frank hadn’t played football in over two years, so he went with cheer instead, a situation in which he said “the puzzle pieces just kind of fell into place.”

Frank didn’t initially know how much physical activity he’d be getting as a member of the cheer team or how difficult the sport was, but that skepticism quickly went away when he joined the squad.

“I never cheered in high school, so cheer was completely new to me. What I didn’t realize was how hard cheer is, as far as stamina, muscle endurance, and hand-eye coordination when you’re throwing someone in the air and catching their feet. I didn’t anticipate cheer to be as difficult as it was. It was quite the switch,” Frank said.

Going from track, basketball, and football to cheer created a drastically different atmosphere for Frank, but there are some similarities shared between the sports. After giving up track, Frank contemplated just going to the gym and going for jogs, but he wanted to remain an athlete, and he found out cheer provided the opportunity for that, leading him to walk on.

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“When I knew a guy on the team, he was saying you’re still pretty active. We have practice every day, you’re lifting every day, you still have to be in great shape. On a typical game day, we’re running five to six miles,” Frank said.

Experience in many different sports throughout his life and an overall high level of fitness was certainly an advantage for Frank during the tryout process, but he believes his potential as a cheerleader was more important.

Frank said that, unlike other teams, the cheerleading team is always searching for athletes who have the potential to make an impact on the team later on, especially male cheerleaders.

“The thing about our cheer program is, specifically for guys, if you show that you have potential to possibly be something great for the program, they’ll take a chance on you, and a lot of sports, especially at the collegiate level, don’t handle it like that,” he said. “I had the opportunity to try out and I guess I showed promising values and features that they were looking for.”

A year after making the roster as a walk-on, Frank became the Penn State cheerleading mic man, another role that’s different from his initial expectations but is “great.”

Frank, who enjoys playing pickleball when he isn’t in practice, has been especially surprised by the number of people he has to keep in mind when working in a Beaver Stadium full of fans, whether it be his teammates or the fans he’s hyping up.

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“Especially for the mic man position, you just work with a lot of different people, in a sense, where you have to think about the students, you have to think about the other fans, you have to think about the football team, you have to think about the away team, I have to think about my own team, I have to think about TV,” Frank said.

“There’s a lot to think about, and there’s a very specific feel for what Penn State wants to give off, so you’re trying to please all of these people in maybe 15 seconds when you’re hyping up this crowd as a cheerleader and as the mic man. It’s great, though.”

One of the duties of Penn State cheer’s mic man is asking the crowd, “Are you ready for Penn State football?” prior to each home game — a tradition dating back many years.

Frank enjoyed the feeling of community that has come with this responsibility and saw the seven-word question asked to over 110,000 people as far more than just a question.

“That part’s extremely exciting, and it’s really fun to hype up 110,000 people that already know what you’re going to say, and they say it with you and join in,” Frank said. “I love the sense of camaraderie with it, where it’s just like we’re all here to do one job. No matter what, the thing that I think is beautiful about being the mic man is there are so many people in the exact same place doing the exact same thing at the exact same time, and everybody has one goal and one mission. What you believe in is aside. We are all one.”

Majoring in theater and media studies, Frank said being the mic man requires a mix of his natural self and performing. Following graduation, he wants to take his experience as an athlete and cheerleader into creating his own personal health and wellness content creation business.

“When we say ‘We Are Penn State,’ it really comes into fruition there. It’s so beautiful to be in the middle of that and look around and take that in,” Frank said.