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Philadelphia Eagles Liberty Belles at SuperBowl XV

By Jay Oza
North Andover Patch
January 31, 2012

[Photos]

Two amazing journeys started in the football season of 2001.

A young quarterback by the name of Tom Brady buttoned up his chinstrap after hometown favorite Drew Bledsoe went down with a severe injury.

The same season, a young dancer named Melissa Amershek moved to North Andover and joined the Patriots cheerleading squad.

The adventure that ensued will forever live on in the hearts of New Englanders, and it would also help Amershek open up a dance studio in North Andover that was recently voted the number 1 dance school in Andover and North Andover in each of the last two years.

For Amershek, the owner of Just Dance in North Andover, that journey began with a test.

Amershek joined the cheering squad in 2001 with only a basic understanding of the game. “They make you take this five page test,” Amershek told Patch. “You’re not allowed to be on the field until you pass the test and you know your stuff,” she continued.

And with that, a seed of passion for football was planted. “By the second or third game we were so into it we could make calls ourselves,” she recalled.

As Brady gained confidence and wins, Amershek and her cheerleading teammates had a phenomenal view from the field.

“It’s intense being on those sidelines,” she said. As the playoffs approached, the intensity increased.

In the divisional round of the 2001 playoffs, the Patriots hosted the Oakland Raiders in what is unanimously known as one of the most dramatic, picturesque, and exciting football games of all time.

The “Tuck Rule” game was played in almost blizzard conditions and it was the last game played at the old Foxborough Stadium. In the waning minutes, the game was almost lost when Brady appeared to have fumbled the ball.

Amershek and her teammates held their breath on the sidelines until the final ruling declared that the Patriots would retain the ball.

“Thank God for that call, it’s made history,” Amershek recalled.

After winning the AFC Championship in Pittsburgh, Amershek, Brady, and the Patriots moved on to Super Bowl XXXVI in New Orleans.

“To be there for the Super Bowl, it was unbelievable,” Amershek said.

When asked which experience was more memorable, Amershek replied “It was the first successful Super Bowl so that would have to take the cake.”

“The Snow Bowl was a close second; that was the last game in the old stadium,” she continued.

Amershek now runs one of the Merrimack Valley’s most successful dance studios, Just Dance.

“This is my passion; it’s what I love to do,” she said.

“I had over 100 customers on day one of opening my doors, and it’s grown every year,” she continued. “Right now we’re at about 300 students and it’s still growing.”

Amershek also credits the town of North Andover for fostering a good attitude toward businesses. “When you’re trying to open a new business in this area, the town works with you so much,” she said. “It’s business friendly, its family friendly, and it’s just a nice, safe area.”

Just Dance offers competition and recreational programs as well as a popular boutique. “We have something for everyone,” Amershek said.

As for her beloved Patriots, there is a big game on Sunday, in case you needed a reminder.

In Super Bowl XLVI, Amershek, like many of us, is hoping for another Patriots victory. “I don’t want to jinx us, but I’m thinking Welker as MVP,” she said.

The adventure continues this Sunday as Brady and the Patriots hope for a fourth Super Bowl win and Amershek and her students continue to dance their hearts out.

Bonnie-Jill Laflin returns to Candlestick with her father, Ross Laflin, to reminisce about the 49ers.

As I prepare for this weekend’s NFC Championship Game, I am filled with anticipation.

It is so exciting to see the San Francisco 49ers host the most important game of their season.

I’m so proud to see they are getting the respect they’ve been missing since those glory years.

Fans everywhere are talking about their chances against the New York Giants and how this will be a true test. But, win or lose, the new Jim Harbaugh 49ers are making a statement. In just one year, they have made an incredible turnaround, and who would have thought the road to the Super Bowl would come through Candlestick Park.

As a San Francisco native, I grew up a 49ers fan. I had no choice, being a daddy’s girl and he being a 49ers season-ticket holder; I was always in tow to each home game.

This past Saturday, as I stepped onto the sidelines at The Stick with my dad, my head flooded with so many emotions.

These were the same sidelines I cheered on as a member of the 49ers Gold Rush from 1994 to ’96, the years when if we didn’t win a championship, it was a bad year. The dynasty years, the era of Steve Young and Jerry Rice. The year when Young finally got that monkey off his back, and now here I was again.

It was a perfectly sunny day, unlike most in San Francisco in January, when the fog and biting cold are normal. I wondered whether this was a sign.

Bonnie-Jill Laflin was a 49ers cheerleader in the mid-1990s.

I had my Super Bowl ring on, along with all my blinged-out Niners gear.

I felt like I was back home and with my 49ers family, surrounded by so many 49ers greats from the ’80s and the ’90s, such as Joe Montana, Dwight Clark, Eric Davis, Brent Jones and Keena Turner, now supporting the new members of the 49ers family.

I said hello to coach George Seifert, who was being honored that day, and we reminisced about the good old days and talked about how we both hoped this would mark the return of the 49ers, the 49ers of the DeBartolo years.

But now we’re here in 2012, with a new regime led by 49ers president Jed York, who spent a few moments with me on the field prior to the game and dubbed me the 49ers’ good luck charm.

The player intros of the starting defense got those in the crowd swinging their rally towels and screaming, “Who’s got it better than us — nobody!” That’s Harbaugh’s mantra. The game was an emotional roller coaster, a high-powered offense and the NFL’s stingiest defense battling quarter after quarter. Who would have ever thought that in the final four minutes, these two teams would be exchanging blows like heavyweight boxers in the last round of a championship fight.

The emotions bonded us as we exchanged high-fives, and paced up and down the aisles with each lead change. Fans who did not know each other before the game now were united in one cause to get a W and advance to the NFC title game once more. The Stick was rocking it.

Then came “The Grab” with nine seconds left as Vernon Davis scored the winning touchdown on the 30th anniversary of “The Catch.” And finally Alex Smith got the monkey off his back and silenced his critics.

Harbaugh, in only one year, has instilled a new attitude and a new energy.

This is what sports is all about.

I looked around the stands, and I saw everyone hugging and screaming, my dad and I sharing the same hug we shared when I was a girl, and I thought to myself, “Who’s got it better than us — nobody.”

Bonnie-Jill Laflin is the first and only female scout in the NBA, an animal activist, and a former cheerleader. She can be reached on Twitter here.

Melanie Snare is hoping to fulfill her final NFL dream

ATLANTA (January 2, 2011) – Melanie Snare, was a cheerleader/dancer at UNC-Chapel Hill and then cheered in the NFL for the Atlanta Falcons for 5 seasons, was a Captain on the team, traveled to Egypt to entertain the US military, cheered in the American Bowl in Tokyo and was even selected as the 2006 Pro Bowl Cheerleader ending her career on the sidelines in Hawaii. But there was one major NFL dream that never came true – the Super Bowl. Now that final dream could be within reach with the support of the dance & cheerleading world thanks to an online contest for the Super Bowl Bud Light special correspondent.

Bud Light is currently holding a Facebook contest to search for a special correspondent for Super Bowl XLVI and Melanie has entered. Candidates will be evaluated by the number of ‘Likes’ they receive on Facebook and a special judging panel. Melanie is hoping the cheerleading world rallies around her and helps send her to Indianapolis as the special correspondent to make this final dream come true. She works as a TV host based out of Atlanta covering entertainment, red carpets, sports and more so she is perfect for this correspondent position. She even hosted a TV show this NFL season covering the Atlanta Falcons Cheerleaders audition process and swimsuit calendar shoot in Bermuda called New South.

To help this NFL Cheerleader Alumni make it to the Super Bowl, please vote for her as the Super Bowl correspondent before January 20, 2012. Click here and follow the simple instructions below:

1. Click on “View Applications”
2. Find the video titled “Melanie Snare” and click on it. [currently it's on the first page, but you may have to browse through the pages]
3. Click “like” to the right of Melanie’s video under her name to “vote” for her.
4. It will prompt you to share your vote on your Facebook wall to let others know to vote for Melanie too.

For more information about Melanie, please visit www.MelanieSnare.com and please connect with her on Facebook (Click here) & Twitter (Click here). She loves connecting with cheerleaders from around the world!

By John Branch
New York Times
February 4, 2011

DALLAS — A substantial wing of the Dallas Cowboys’ suburban headquarters is devoted to the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. On Thursday afternoon, in an immense dance studio, members of the world’s most famous cheer squad rehearsed for one of their dozens of appearances surrounding the Super Bowl this week.

“We have never been this busy,” said Kelli McGonagill Finglass, a Cowboys cheerleader in the 1980s and the director since 1991.

But Super Bowl XLV itself represents an unusual happenstance in the coupled worlds of football and cheerleading. In a state famous for Friday Night Lights and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, where Lawrence Herkimer practically invented the modern cheerleader (and did patent the pompom), there will be no cheerleaders at the biggest football game of them all.

The Packers and Steelers are two of the six N.F.L. teams without professional cheerleading squads. Sunday’s game is believed to be the first time in more than 40 years that no team cheerleaders will be on the sideline of the Super Bowl.

It will probably be the first and last time that no cheerleaders will be on the sideline for a football game at Cowboys Stadium, too, if not anywhere else in Texas.

This is a place where it is often said that parents wish their boys to become quarterbacks and their girls to become cheerleaders. That a cheerleader-less Super Bowl is being played in Texas, at the home of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, is seen here as the ultimate irony.

“In Texas, if you have football players on the field and you don’t have cheerleaders on the sideline?” Denise Martin, founder of Texas Cheerleader magazine, asked rhetorically. “Where there is football in Texas, there are cheerleaders.”

Not this time.

Both the Packers and Steelers have had cheerleading squads in the past. The Packers, in fact, say that they had the N.F.L.’s first, in 1931. But the franchises now believe that modern-day professional cheerleaders — dance squads, really — are not a good fit for their teams or their markets.

The New York Giants, Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions and Cleveland Browns also do not have professional cheerleader squads.

They all stand in stark relief to the Dallas Cowboys and their famed cheerleaders, a profit maker for the franchise (the team will not reveal the numbers) thanks to merchandise sales, appearance fees and the millions of mouse clicks that bring fans to the team’s Web site. It is nearly impossible to imagine the Cowboys without the cheerleaders.

“We’re too strongly branded together,” Finglass said.

By doing without cheerleaders, however, the Steelers and Packers send a quieter message about how they view themselves and want to be seen by others.

The Packers disbanded their last professional cheer-and-dance squad in 1988, after a poll of fans found strong opposition and indifference. The team came to see the dancers as incongruous to the franchise’s focus on football history, from founder Curly Lambeau to coach Vince Lombardi and beyond.

For the past 20 years, there have been cheerleaders at Lambeau Field — co-ed squads borrowed from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and nearby St. Norbert College. The Packers did not invite them to the Super Bowl.

“We think our nod to tradition and a collegiate feel at games probably adds to our brand value — for the opposite reason having cheerleaders may add to that of the Cowboys,”‘ said Jason Wied, Green Bay’s vice president for administration.

Dressed in Packers regalia, the cheerleading men hoist megaphones and wave giant flags. The women wear traditional sweaters and skirts. They start chants, build pyramids and hold signs, just as they do for their college teams on other days of the week.

“Most other teams are more dancers, not cheerleaders,” said Ann Rodrian, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay cheerleading coach whose squad has worked Packers’ home games for 20 years. “They don’t usually show us because my girls have all their clothes on.”

The Steelerettes cheered in Pittsburgh from 1961 to 1969. They were women from Robert Morris Junior College (now Robert Morris University) brought to help a struggling franchise sell tickets and attract attention.

“We knew from the beginning that the Chief didn’t really want us down on the field,” said the Steelerette Dianne Feazell Rossini, referring to the late Steelers founder Art Rooney. “Mr. Rooney wasn’t really crazy about it, but he kind of tolerated it for a time.”

She remembers the game against the Bears at Forbes Field after the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy. Given the somber mood, the Steelerettes were asked to stay seated on the sideline and not cheer. To fight the chill, Rooney ordered that they be given Steelers jackets, Rossini said. Hers now resides in a Pittsburgh museum, along with her Steelerettes uniform.

The Steelers make little mention of the Steelerettes. The team this week declined to discuss its reasons for not having cheerleaders.

“It’s simply an organizational decision,” the team spokesman Dave Lockett wrote in an e-mail message.

Yet it has been at least 40 years, however, since the Super Bowl was played without cheerleaders. The precise game is hard to determine because the N.F.L. and the Pro Football Hall of Fame have no records of whether cheerleading squads accompanied teams to various Super Bowls.

But one man has chronicled the games like no other. Steve Sabol is president of NFL Films, founded in 1964 by his father, Ed. (Ed Sabol is a finalist this year for the Hall of Fame, whose 2011 class will be announced on Saturday.) Steve Sabol was assigned to film off-field action on the sideline for the first Super Bowl in January 1967, between Green Bay and Kansas City.

“I don’t remember ever seeing any Packers cheerleaders or Chiefs cheerleaders on the sideline,” Sabol said. “That’s not to say they weren’t there, but it was my job to shoot anything like that. And I never saw any.”

Sabol vaguely recalls cheerleaders at Super Bowl II between Green Bay and Oakland, perhaps from the Raiders or a local squad from Miami, where the game was held, unaffiliated with either team.

“Super Bowl III, between the Jets and Colts, I know the Colts had cheerleaders,” Sabol said. And both the Chiefs and Minnesota Vikings had them at Super Bowl IV, he said. Every Super Bowl has had at least once squad since.

That streak will end on Sunday.

“It’s weird, for this site, not to have cheerleaders,” Sabol said. “Because the Dallas cheerleaders are the most famous cheerleaders in the N.F.L.”

Their studio at Cowboys’ headquarters is about 100 feet long and 40 feet wide, with a hardwood floor and mirrors lining two sides. Another wall holds life-sized posters of the cheerleaders, in their familiar uniform of cowboy boots, short white shorts, low-cut blue blouses and fringed vests.

A large banner hangs as a sort of cheerleaders’ creed; “Promise to look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true,” one pronouncement reads. A scale stands at the door. An adjacent office is filled with posters of the cheerleaders in bikinis, shots used for the squad’s popular calendar.

On Thursday afternoon, 15 cheerleaders from the team’s “show group,” an elite part of the 34-member squad, practiced a routine with a hip-hop dance troupe. They will perform together at a party on Saturday night at the House of Blues.

On Sunday, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders will make several appearances outside Cowboys Stadium, performing for fans and sponsors before the game.

But inside their home, something unusual will occur. The hubbub of the Super Bowl sideline will not include cheerleaders.

In Texas, of all places.

By Brett Hart
Dunn County News
February 2, 2011

Just six teams in the National Football League compete each week without the support of professional cheerleaders. Two of those teams — the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers — will be facing off Sunday in Super Bowl XLV. Ironically, the league’s most anticipated and most prestigious game will take place at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, home of the most recognized NFL professional cheerleading squad.

Sunday’s showdown will be the first time in the Super Bowl’s 45 years that no cheerleaders will be taking to the sidelines. One of those cheerleaders not making the trip is 2010 Colfax High graduate Heather Smith, whose UW-Green Bay cheer squad doubles as the Packers’ official cheerleaders, although they are not employed by the team.

Thankful, honored

“That’s perfectly fine with us,” said Smith after being asked how she felt about being excluded from the nation’s biggest sporting event. “We have had the opportunity to cheer for them at every home game, and no matter where we are or what were are doing, we will continue to support the ‘Pack.’ We are very fortunate, being a college cheer team, to have the opportunity to cheer for an NFL team, and for that, I am so thankful and honored. I know that the Packers will go out and fight to bring the Super Bowl title back to Titletown USA!”

The last time the two teams met was Dec. 20, 2009, in Pittsburgh, game that ended in a 37-36 victory for the defending Super Bowl champion Steelers on a Ben Roethlisberger touchdown pass to Mike Wallace as time expired. For many, the expectations are for a similar game this time between two of the league’s most accomplished teams.

This is the Steelers’ eighth trip to Super Bowl, winning six of their first seven appearances. Green Bay was in the first two Super Bowls ever and are 3-for-4 in the title games race.

Beyond imagination

Smith has found her inaugural season as a collegiate cheerleader to be an eventful learning experience.

“I have learned to be more confident in myself,” said Smith. “When you’re out there in front of thousands of people, you really have to trust yourself and be confident that you will succeed… I’m doing stuff in college cheerleading that I never would have pictured myself ever doing.

“Believe it or not, cheer has taught me how to manage my time more wisely,” Smith noted. “Cheerleading in college is huge responsibility, and it is up to you to balance homework, classes, work, a social life and cheerleading. That can be rather complicating, but in the end, it makes you grow as a person.”

She added, “I have learned to have a great deal more respect for cheerleaders everywhere. The amount of time, we put into what we do is ridiculous, but so worth it in the end.”

So, although she won’t be joining her second team in Texas, Smith said, “I am still in love with cheerleading… Cheering for the Packers this year has been amazing. I never imagined when I made the squad this past year that the Packers would make it all the way and that just made it 10 times more exciting.

“The Packers are an amazing team and deserve their place at the Super Bowl,” Smith continued. “Now I’m proud to say that in the future, I can be like, ‘Yeah, I cheered for the Packers the year they went to Super Bowl 45!”

Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers Cheerleader Brooke Newton (most recently seen on How I Met Your Mother) is  stranded on a bus in the path of a tornado in the Cars.com Super Bowl commercial.

And back in 2005 Bonnie-Jill Laflin (DCC, SF Gold Rush, GS Warrior Girls) appeared in the FedEX “Burt Reynolds Dances with a Bear” commercial.

By Sheila Stroup
The Times-Picayune

For Christine “Chrissy” Hamilton, cheering the Saints on Sunday in Sun Life Stadium still seems like a dream.

“I kept saying, ‘Please pinch me. This doesn’t feel real,’” she says.

The first half of the game went by in a flash.

“I couldn’t believe it was already halftime,” she says. “I didn’t want the game to be half over.”
Hamilton, 23, knew the Super Bowl performance would be her last one as a Saintsation.

Director Lesslee Fitzmorris lets cheerleaders stay on the team a maximum of four years and then launches them “into the real world.”

“I want them to be our leaders of tomorrow,” she says.

She asked Hamilton to stay for a fifth year because her first year as a Saintsation was interrupted by Hurricane Katrina.

“She’s a great role model, a great example of someone who has triumphed over adversity,” Fitzmorris says. “Chrissy lost everything in the storm.”

Hamilton grew up in Chalmette. She was a student at Xavier University College of Pharmacy in New Orleans in August 2005. Her family had moved into their brand new house earlier in the year.

“The storm left 15 feet of water in it,” she says.

Hamilton Enterprises, the 30-year-old family furniture and hardware business her dad and his three brothers ran, flooded, too.

“The store was our life. My mom and dad had never done anything else,” she says “It was such a heart-wrenching time for us.”

When her family evacuated, Hamilton took three days worth of clothes and her Saintsations uniforms with her.

“That was something Lesslee taught us,” she says. “Don’t evacuate without your uniforms.”
Her family stayed in Panama City, Fla., for three months, and Hamilton wasn’t able to get to the Saints games that were played in San Antonio. But she did make it to the game against the New York Giants that was played in Giants stadium on Sept. 19, 2005.

“That was great because a bunch of girls from other NFL teams sent us care packages,” she says. “They gave us underwear, pajamas, tennis shoes, toiletries — all the things we had lost. That really gave us some spirit and uplifted us in such hard times.”

The only other regular game Hamilton made it to that season was the game against the Carolina Panthers that was played at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge.

“It was just such a hard year I didn’t want to go back for my second year,” she says. “But my mom said, ‘Just give it a try.’”

By then, her parents, David and Lisa Hamilton, had come back home to rebuild their home and the family business in Chalmette, and she was back in pharmacy school at Xavier.

She decided to listen to her mom, and she’s thrilled she did.

“I’ve had a blast ever since,” she says. “The Saintsations helped make me the person I am today, and I think Lesslee for that all the time.”

Hamilton says she used to be so shy she was reluctant to put in her own order at McDonalds. Now, she can walk into a room and carry on a conversation with someone she’s never met before. And the once timid young woman is on the cover of the 2010 Saintsations Swimsuit Calendar.

In addition to gaining confidence, she has learned time management, something you need when you’re a full-time college student, work at Walgreen’s in Chalmette, have dance practice three times a week, and make frequent public appearances.

“It’s been a busy year,” she says.

It has also been the best year of her life.

“When I think back to four years ago, when I didn’t what the future would hold, it just seems amazing,” she says.

One highlight of the season was having her sister Brittany, 20, join the Saintsations. Another was the Sept. 3 Saints game against Miami in the Super Dome. It was her birthday, and her boyfriend, Brandon Licciardi, proposed to her in front of 68,000 people.

“It was a complete surprise,” she says. “We’re getting married on April 2, 2011.”

Hamilton will cherish her years as a Saintsation, but she’s looking forward to getting launched into the real world.

She’ll graduate from pharmacy school, a six-year program, in May, and then she’ll have time to plan her wedding. She and Licciardi will live in St. Bernard Parish.

“My fiance is a police officer in St. Bernard Parish, and he’s committed to the parish,” she says. “And we’re both really devoted to our families. We could never leave home.”

A year ago, Hamilton was chosen by her teammates to represent them as part of the cheerleading squad at the 2009 NFL Pro Bowl in Honolulu, and she thought that experience would be hard to top.

“But being at the Super Bowl with the Saints was a hundred times better,” she says. “I can’t even put into words how great it was, but I will remember it for the rest of my life.”