Millard West alumnus Maddy Unger has danced her way through her first year with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders in 2025 and is hoping for more in 2026.
The Omaha native and former Nebraska dance team member was one of six rookies chosen to join the team in July, calling it a dream come true.
“This has been the craziest year of my life,” Unger told Hurrdat Sports. “I feel like my life kind of did a 180. Obviously, I’ve danced my whole life, but now taking it to the pro level and just all of the amazing experiences I’ve been able to have with the Cowboys has just changed my life. It’s been literally the best year of my life.”
Unger said she arrived in Texas with just a suitcase in June after making it to the finals. Once she made the team, her parents and brother helped her move into an apartment, with the process taking off from there.
“This is my first time ever living away from Nebraska, so I love it, first off,” Unger said. “Texas is an amazing, amazing state, and it kind of reminds me of Nebraska in a way. I just feel like it’s bigger and the weather is a little bit nicer than Nebraska, but it was hard. Once I actually got settled and was kind of in the groove of things here, that’s when I actually realized like ‘OK, this is actually my first time living away from family and all of my friends, and just the community back home. So it was a little bit hard; I still get home sick to this day.”
Unger said that the music began quickly after making the squad.
“Right after we made the team, we started practicing the next day for the season,” Unger said. “It was hard, and I was homesick at first, but I did have practice every single day. I was able to be around all of my teammates, and a lot of the rookies were in the same position as me. We were just leaning on each other, and it was really nice to be able to see everybody every day. You quickly become a family with the 35 other girls around you.”
Rookie candidates and official members wear the same outfit in different colors during training camp, with the former wearing pink and the latter wearing blue. After the rookies are selected, they get the blue gear on the first day of practice.
“It kind of was just weird to look at myself in the mirror; I felt like it was kind of every other day,” Unger said. “I was getting ready for practice, how I did during training camp, but then I put on the blue, and I was like, ‘I am actually a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.’”
Unger first danced in the Cowboys’ preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens on Aug. 16.
“I knew that I was going to be in front of the crowd once I made the team and everything, but also that was one of the first moments that I really felt like everything paid off,” Unger said. “All of the work that I had done, and preparing for auditions, and training camp, and then even after training camp we had practices before the season actually started, so it was super surreal and rewarding, just because I felt like my work had finally paid off, and I was at the place that I wanted to be.”
The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders perform at every home game, and Unger said that she cried before the first one.
“I remember standing in the tunnel waiting to go out for Thunder for pregame,” Unger said. “I just could hear all of the fans, and we can see them a little bit too, so I was kind of just peeking out and I was crying happy tears.”
The Cowboys have a lot of traditions, including playing on Thanksgiving. In 2025, they played the Kansas City Chiefs, with the cheerleaders performing with Grammy-nominated artist Post Malone.
“The Cowboys versus Chiefs on Thanksgiving was by far my favorite game,” Unger said. “We got to perform with Post Malone for the Salvation Army Red Kettle halftime, so it literally was the coolest experience I’ve ever had dancing wise. That was seriously the most fun game, and we won, and it was Thanksgiving, so all of my family was there. It was so much fun.”
Another tradition that Dallas holds is its annual My Cause My Boots game, which came against the Philadelphia Eagles on Nov. 23. Every cheerleader chooses a cause that is important to them, putting a star on their boot.
Unger’s cause was uterine cancer awareness as her mother battled the disease during Maddy’s sophomore year of college.
“My mom’s my best friend, and I wanted to honor her, what she went through and her strength to get through it,” Unger said. “That game was pretty emotional, just having that color of star on our Lucchese x boots. It was just like you know that you’re dancing for something more than yourself, so it definitely was a super emotional day, but also really special because my mom’s OK. She had the best-case scenario, and she’s good now, so I wanted to honor her and her resilience throughout that situation, because it was really difficult to watch her go through that.”
If fans want to know more about what life is like for Unger and her teammates, Netflix renewed its show “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders” for a third season. The show follows the squad through training camp, auditions and the preseason. Unger said that she’s unsure how much she’ll be in the show.
“I’m a little nervous; I’ve just never been on TV, so that is very, very, new to me,” Unger said. “I know sometimes when I was dancing for the University of Nebraska, sometimes we would have little tiny snippets of us on TV, but having a Netflix show is definitely a whole new ball game. I won’t lie, I think it’s going to be really weird to see myself on screen.”
Unger said she’s excited for the show after watching prior seasons.
“I’m honestly just looking forward to seeing, especially, the rookies’ progression throughout the year, and seeing our relationships evolve on camera, because we all came in complete strangers and now us six are literally best friends,” Unger said. “So I’m really excited to see how our relationships evolve throughout the show. That’s something that I admire a lot about the show is our producers do a really, really good job of showcasing the relationships that we have with each other and showing how much of a family it is, so I’m excited.”
Unger is staying busy during the offseason, making appearances in the community with plans of returning to Nebraska for a visit. She said that she’ll use what she’s learned as a rookie going into next season.
“This year, I feel really grateful, leaving my rookie season and having had literally the best year of my life,” Unger said. “I’m just really excited to go into this year’s auditions knowing what the process is like and also being able to have that confidence of I have a year under my belt. So I’m just trying to keep exceeding my ceiling.”
Tryouts for returners begin in June, and Unger hopes to return to the field for 2026-27.
