Stephanie Godlewski
Pika Magazine
3/1/2010

Chamorrita and Sea Gal Pia Gillan returned to Guam with her squad last month. The group wowed military audiences during the Super Bowl.

Pika caught up with Guam’s favorite Sea Gal and learned a lot about life as a cheerleader in the National Football League. Here’s what she had to say:

Pika: What have you been up to since becoming a Sea Gal?

PG: I don’t know where to start. It’s been a crazy year. (she shakes her head in the tropical breeze and her hair blows across her face. She extracts the stray strands from her mouth, smiles brightly and continues) A few months before I graduated I made the team. I made the team in April then I graduated in June. As soon as we made the team the next week it was practice, practice, practice. All throughout the summer every weekend once throughout the week. It was just hectic and the season didn’t actually start until August. We were practicing for that and games every Sunday. Appearances left and right, which I love, that’s probably my favorite part about being a Sea Gal, then this tour.

Pika: Next year are you planning to re-audition? Do you re-audition or just get picked up?

PG: Everyone has to go through auditions again, but the nice thing is we just go to finals automatically. We don’t have to go through the three-step process.

Pika: So you want to do another year?

PG: I hope so! (She says with an excited shrug) I’m going to try. I’ll definitely try.

Pika: During the season you had two practices a week then games on Sunday?

PG: We practice Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30 until whenever she lets us go, usually it’s about four hours long. That’s twice a week. Then we have games on Sunday and we’re there for about nine hours, so that’s our whole Sunday.

Pika: Is it all dancing or is there other training too? Are you guys lifting weights and running?

PG: Oh no, we start dancing right away. It’s a lot of working out. We work out at practice like stretching and cardio, but mostly dancing. I don’t know if you saw the kick line (she gestures back to the performance area) but that’s a work out on its own.

Pika: Did you have a favorite game this year?

PG: Probably the first one. (She pauses to look off to one side pondering) My first and last game. The first game because I didn’t know what to expect. I’m usually a nervous person. I was in SKIP and I was always nervous before performing. But going out there in front of 65,000 people I was totally fine. It was great.

Pika: What was it like to walk out there that first time?

PG: I can’t really describe it. Everyone is cheering down on you. (she says motioning with her flashing pom-poms) It’s one of the loudest stadiums in the NFL so it’s so loud you can’t help but bring back the energy and bounce it off of them. It’s an amazing experience.

Pika: What about the Seahawks fans, are they good fans?

PG: The best fans ever, except for my local fans. They’re just so loud. I don’t even know how to explain it. If the team is not doing well, which you know, I don’t want to go there, (she motions with her hand as if brushing something off. Too bad the Seahawks can’t brush off their poor performance the same way.) but the fans don’t stop. They’re there 100 percent for everyone.

Pika: Who are you rooting for in the Superbowl?

PG: I don’t have a preference but I’m going to go with the Saints because I feel like they deserve it. It’s their first time to the Super Bowl. I feel like, why not? Go for the Saints.

Pika: Do you hope to be at the Super Bowl one day?

PG: Oh yes. (she says getting visibly excited) I was just talking about that today because we were at the kick off and all the girls were saying, ‘How cool would it be to go to the Super Bowl?’ We have three girls who went to the Super Bowl with the Seahawks a few years ago and they loved it, so hopefully one day.

Pika: What’s your favorite junk food?

PG: Salt and vinegar chips are my favorite. (she says with a big smile)

Pika: Do you get much fiesta food out in Seattle?

PG: Not really. I try to cook on my own but I’m not very good.

Pika: Has your family been supportive of your cheering?

PG: Oh yeah. They’re so excited. My mom is like my biggest fan in my family. She’s so excited. I came home for Christmas break and everything was blue and green Seahawks colors for our party.

Pika: What do you hope to do with your criminal justice degree?

PG: I’m trying to study for the LSATs this year, taking a break then trying to go to law school next year, 2011.

Pika: Once you become a lawyer do you hope to come back to Guam?

PG: Yes I hope to raise my family here.

Pika: What do you miss most?

PG: My family first and foremost. I have two younger siblings and it’s so hard to be away from them. Sometimes I can’t even call them because it gets me so emotional just hearing their voices. And the food, of course. (She turns around to look at the view off Nimitz Hill) Then the beautiful scenery.

Pika: Do you have a boyfriend?

PG: Yes

Pika: Is he a Seahawks fan?

PG: Yes. (she giggles) Mostly a Sea Gals fan though.

Pika: What’s your idea of a perfect date with your boyfriend?

PG: I don’t know. We love to go out and try new restaurants. I love just doing that, eating.

Pika: So how do you stay in shape?

PG: Practice, working out.

Pika: Did you watch a lot of football before you joined the Sea Gals?

PG: I did. I wouldn’t watch it as religiously as I do now. It’s so much more exciting now because I see it firsthand. I would watch with my dad growing up.

Pika: Do you watch the other squads?

PG: Oh yeah. It’s funny because I went to my first Seahawks game when I first started college and I was just watching the cheerleaders. Now here I am.

Pika: There are some people who don’t consider cheerleading a sport. What would you say to them?

PG: It’s a sport. (she says slightly taken aback by the question and takes a moment to collect her thoughts before continuing.) It’s definitely a sport. Dance is a sport. We basically dance that’s all we do pretty much and root on our team. It’s definitely a sport.

Pika: Anything you want to tell the people of Guam?

PG: I miss you all. (she says leaning forward as if she wanted to say it to everyone directly) I love home. I got off the plane and was like, ‘Why am I living in Seattle. I want to be back here.’ But this is such an amazing experience and it’s only making me a stronger person and building character. But I will be back.

Pika: Anything you want to add?

PG: I was just going to say to any aspiring cheerleaders or dancers or anyone on the island, (she says taking a serious tone) if you have a chance to go off and try something, just do it you never know what’s going to happen. I did it on a whim and even if you don’t make it you tried. Just go out there and have fun with it!

By Stephanie Godlewski
Pacific Daily News

Amid rustling pom-poms and 1,000-watt smiles Chamorrita Pia Gillan stands out.

The 22-year-old Seattle Sea Gals cheerleader and Nimitz Hill native got the chance to perform for military personnel yesterday.

During halftime of the Super Bowl at Top O’ the Mar, Gillan took the stage with her squad and had both Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints fans cheering.

In attendance was her 13-year-old sister Mylisa Gillan.

“I knew she danced but when she got this big I was like, ‘Wow, good job,’” Mylisa Gillan said. “My mom goes all out. She’s so excited. When she found out Pia made it, she went up to everyone and was like, ‘My daughter’s a Sea Gal!’”

Pia Gillan said the support of her family has been great, but being away from them is the hardest part of living in Seattle.

Being a Sea Gal makes it worth it.

“It’s been a crazy year. A few months before I graduated I made the team. I made the team in April then I graduated in June. As soon as we made the team, the next week it was practice, practice, practice. All throughout the summer every weekend, once throughout the week,” Pia Gillan said. “It was just hectic and the season didn’t actually start until August. We were practicing for that and games every Sunday. Appearances left and right, which I love. That’s probably my favorite part about being a Sea Gal — then this tour.”

Pia Gillan said she plans to go out for the squad again in April. All the girls must try out each year but Sea Gal veterans are automatically in the audition finals.

While she hopes to cheer on the Seahawks for another year, her long-term plans have her heading back to school.

“I’m trying to study for the LSATs this year. Taking a break, then trying to go to law school next year, 2011,” she said.

[Seattle Sea Gals]

By Sea Gal Amanda
Seahawks.com
Jan 25, 2010

Today I will travel to South Florida to represent the Sea Gals at the Pro Bowl. I am truly thankful to have been a member of such an amazing team for the past three seasons, and I am humbled to be the Seahawks’ 2010 Pro Bowl Cheerleader.

The Sea Gals are traditionally the first to know who will represent our squad at the Pro Bowl. However, this year we had to wait until our last game of the season on January 3rd to find out who would receive the honor. Being announced as this year’s representative in front of all the fans at Qwest Field was overwhelming! Since then, I have been preparing extensively for the 2010 Pro Bowl. I have been learning nine new sideline routines, fitting for new practice attire, and reviewing my itinerary of the week’s events prior to the game.

This year the NFL all-star game will take place a week before the Super Bowl, and it will be held in the championship game’s host city. I am excited to see what these changes will bring, and I am eager to share this experience with the 25 other Pro Bowl Cheerleaders from around the league.

Being given such an honor is both a gift and a responsibility. My teammates are all talented performers and remarkable individuals; any one of them would be a wonderful representative. I am so grateful for their support, and I will be thinking of each and every one of them this week in Miami!

The Sea Gals Show Group is preparing for their Jain 30th departure as part of the Armed Forces Entertainment (AFE) Pacific tour. It will be a 14 day trip through Hawaii, Japan, and Guam, and the team will perform their 90 minute show at nine different military bases. Click here to watch them prepare.

Clare Farnsworth
Seahawks.com

The Seahawks will have a representative at the Pro Bowl after all. It’s Sea Gal Amanda Janner, who has quite a story of her own to tell.

As a cheerleader at St. Pius X High School in Houston, Amanda Janner never expected to become a Sea Gal – let alone the squad’s representative at the Pro Bowl.

But here she is, about to be the Seahawks’ lone envoy at the NFL all-star game, which this year is being held in Miami on Jan. 31.

“I was very surprised to be chosen,” Janner said. “Because this was never anything I planned to do. Once I finished my senior year of high school, I really thought that cheerleading would be something in the past.

“So it is very cool.”

How did this happen? How is it that an on-line media host who moved to Seattle three years ago, after getting her B.A. in broadcast journalism from Loyola University in New Orleans and marrying her high school sweetheart, is Pro Bowl bound?

“Amanda is absolutely a great choice,” said Sherri Thompson, director of the Sea Gals and a former member of the dance team that has graced the sidelines at the Kingdome, Husky Stadium and Qwest Field for the past 34 seasons.

“She’s extremely well-spoken and, with her background, working with a microphone and public speaking and all that, it’s just easy for us. She’s just very well composed. She’s obviously beautiful. She’s got a ton of energy in her dance. And she’s photogenic. That’s why she was chosen.”

That might be how Janner got from Seattle to South Florida. But what about the Houston-to-Seattle segment of this saga?

“It was just time for us to move,” Janner said. “We were getting married and decided that we wanted to start our life in a different part of the country and experience something different from Houston.”

The decision process came with a quartet of destination must-haves: A major city; career opportunities; climate; and a NFL team.

Seattle won out as far as size and climate. “We visited Seattle and just loved it,” she said. “It’s just so naturally beautiful. The mountains, with skiing nearby, and the water. Just all these things to do.”

Her husband, Adam, got a job as a financial analyst.

Then there was that fourth item. “One of my criteria was I had to have a NFL team, and it had to have a cheerleading squad that I would want to dance for,” Janner said.

Once here, however, she still had to make that squad.

“Having come from another professional team, and knowing that my director and Sherri knew each other, I felt more pressure,” Janner said. “I thought, ‘Well, Sherri is going to expect a lot from me.’ And I’m not a trained dancer. So it really put on the pressure.”

Pressure that Janner, 27, obviously was able to handle, since she just completed her third season as a Sea Gal.

Janner had put cheerleading, competitive cheerleading/dance and gymnastics on hold after high school to focus on her studies at Loyola – while Adam attended the University of Houston.

Then her present crossed paths with her past, and set the stage for her future.

“My first job out of college was for a local ABC affiliate close to Houston (in Bryan),” Janner said. “And my first assignment was to go and interview the Texans Cheerleaders, along with the players. They were in town visiting the Boys and Girls Club.

“I didn’t know that side of NFL Cheerleading. I didn’t know they did all these appearances and all this charity work. It was obvious they really liked what they were doing and when I talked to them I saw their passion and just how enthused they were to be there.”

Janner had missed the camaraderie, which she still labels as the most enjoyable aspect of being part of a dance team for a professional sports team. So when she moved back to Houston, she spent three years as a member of Texans Cheerleaders before she and Adam decided to make the move to Seattle.

“I love it,” Janner said of being a Sea Gal. “And I’m so happy I made the squad, especially my first year. Not knowing anyone here it made the transition easier because I had 27 friends automatically. They’ve been my family away from home, so I’ve been really thankful for that.”

Now, she gets to add another line to her already impressive resume: Pro Bowl representative.

This wasn’t just an oh-yeah-her selection. Thompson has a list of criteria that a Sea Gal must meet before she gets the annual nod: How she will photograph with representative from all the other teams; how well she will learn the dances; being punctual; appearance when not in uniform; and approaching the game and everything that will surround it as a business trip.

When it came to Janner, it was check, check, check, check and check.

“She’s always on time. She always wears the right thing. She always looks good. And in her free time, she also will make really good choices and represent us well,” as Thompson put it. “It’s an honor and an opportunity.”

Janner is making the trip a family affair. Her husband is going. So are her parents, as well as Adam’s father and brother.

“I feel a lot of responsibility, because I will be the only Sea Gal there,” Janner said. “To be the only representative to show everyone this is what a true Sea Gal is, it’s a difficult task.

“It is an honor, but I do feel a lot of responsibility with it.”

[Amanda at Seahawks.com]

From high school to spokesmodel and back to high school.
By James Ross Gardner
Seattle Metropolitan Magazine

Amber Lancaster giggles when she explains The Hard Times of R. J. Berger, the MTV comedy that will likely pole–vault the 29–year–old Tacoma native from well–known pinup girl to well–known actor. Set in an Ohio high school, the show centers on nerdly R. J. Berger, a sophomore who compensates for his broomstick physique and lack of social skills with, well, what’s in his trousers. “He has a gift, you might call it, which sort of throws him into the spotlight,” explains Lancaster, who plays Jenny Swanson, R. J.’s study buddy and object of desire.

Billed as Superbad meets The Wonder Years—essentially, raunchy coming–of–age comedy with a heart of gold—Hard Times is the latest stop on a scantily clad odyssey that started in 1999, when Lancaster was a senior at Tacoma’s Franklin Pierce High School, the same year she made the Sea Gals squad. After five years of shaking pom–poms for the Seahawks, Lancaster loaded up the U–Haul and rolled down to LA, where she quickly landed a gig with Makita power tools. As Miss Makita 2005, she appeared on the company’s calendar and scooted around the country to help shill drill guns in agrarian burgs like tiny Carroll, Iowa, where she was the talk of the town. “I was on the cover of the newspaper. It was hilarious.”

Other modeling stints followed: bejeweled trophy presenter on the Primetime Emmy Awards and Showcase Showdown siren on The Price Is Right, on which she still appears and frequently jaws about Seattle sports with host and Sounders FC co–owner Drew Carey. Then she got a callback early last year from a TV audition. “I was a little scared about it. I mean, it’s pretty edgy,” she says of the Hard Times pilot script. “But at the same time it was really funny.”

A leitmotif of the show, in production now and scheduled to debut this spring, is R. J.’s constant fantasizing about Lancaster’s character. “In one episode he’s at his locker, and I’m like, ‘Hey R. J., I came to school naked today.’ And he looks at me and it’s me in just a backpack. And then he’s like ‘What?’ And I’m like, ‘Hey R. J. I said, Is it cool if I can’t make it today?’ And then I’m clothed.”

[Amber at imdb.com]

Seattle Sea Gals Amanda and Lauren made an appearance on The Price is Right as a part of a Seattle-themed showcase that included a chance to see the Seahawks play. Special bonus appearance by former Sea Gal Amber Lancaster who’s now a full-time model on TPiR.

[Sea Gals on The Price is Right]

As a Cheerleader for the Seattle Seahawks, Pia Gillan showcases her passion for dance before an audience of thousands

by Tina Potterf
Seattle University Magazine

In the thick of the NFL season, one of the hottest—and hardest to snare—tickets in town is to Seattle Seahawks games. No worries for Pia Gillan, though, who has a prime vantage point at Qwest Field every home game this season. The 2009 criminal justice graduate roots for the team as a member of the Sea Gals, the professional cheering squad.

A growing confidence is one of the unexpected outcomes of being a Sea Gal.

“I never had a lot of confidence. I was always the tall girl in the back of dance class,” says Gillan, who plans to try out again next year and then look into grad school. “This experience and this team have given me that boost of confidence.”

Although she may be a freshman player on the dance team, Gillan is no beginner. She draws on years of dance that began in a studio in her native Guam.

“A classmate of mine was in dance and asked me to go,” Gillan, 22, says of her introduction to dance as a fifth grader at the SKIP Entertainment Company.

For seven years she sharpened her turns and choreography as a member of SKIP, learning a range of dance styles, from jazz to modern. Along the way she also grew as a performer. Any early stage fright faded in time as Gillan danced in competitions in Europe and the mainland United States.

When she was in high school, Gillan’s dance pursuits took a backseat to sports. But by her junior year at SU, she was ready to get back to it. That year she auditioned and made the cut for the Seattle University Dance Team. It was good preparation for her professional turn with the Sea Gals and the demands of performing at sporting events before unpredictable crowds.

“The experience was a lot of fun. I wish I had done it sooner,” says Gillan, who at SU danced mostly hip-hop and jazz routines at the men’s and women’s basketball games. “I liked dancing at all the games and with excited crowds.”

A friend alerted Gillan to the Sea Gals auditions. Without hesitation, she turned out and was counted among more than 200 women vying for a coveted spot.

Auditions started last April. The first round was a quick-paced, one-minute freestyle dance. Those who made it through this stage had to turn around and learn a longer and more choreographed routine to perform before the judges.

While the experience was initially intimidating, Gillan says she felt more comfortable when she learned she would be doing a jazz number. After passing the first two auditions she was on to the finals, which involved a short interview and two new dances.

“I wasn’t nervous until I made it to the finals,” Gillan says. “I felt blessed just to be there because there were so many talented dancers.”

When her number was called, indicating she had made the team, Gillan says it took a minute to register.

“I was shocked when they called my number. I had to double-check it,” she says. “I literally ran out onto the stage at Qwest Field.”

The Sea Gals perform at every Seahawks home game and must keep a rigorous practice and game-day schedule.

Sherri Thompson, director of the Sea Gals, says Gillan stood out as someone with a lot of potential. “She is smart, beautiful and a good dancer,” she says. “I look forward to watching her develop into a major asset for our team as she gains experience.”

A growing confidence is one of the unexpected outcomes of being a Sea Gal.

“I never had a lot of confidence. I was always the tall girl in the back of dance class,” says Gillan, who plans to try out again next year and then look into grad school. “This experience and this team have given me that boost of confidence.”

[Pia at Seahwaks.com]

I neglected to mention yesterday, that you can also download the 2009 Sea Gals team photo here.

New individual photos of the Seattle Seahawks cheerleaders have been posted on Seahawks.com. Go there now!