Honeybears flashback

The Chicago Tribune has posted a collection of vintage photos of the Chicago HoneyBears, cheerleaders for the Chicago Bears. Oh how I love this vintage stuff. I used to think getting the Rams (and the Rams Cheerleaders) back in LA was a lost cause. But if that can happen, maybe one day the HoneyBears will be back. I really think that – aside from those insane collars – they could totally make those uniforms work today.

Click here to view the gallery

Officially called the Bears' Song and Dance Group, the 28 Honey Bears made their debut on July 25, 1977.
Officially called the Bears’ Song and Dance Group, the 28 Honey Bears made their debut on July 25, 1977.
The Honey Bears show off their new uniforms, modeled here by Patti DiAndrea, left, and Mary Kay Kriese, right, on Aug. 22, 1980.
The Honey Bears show off their new uniforms, modeled here by Patti DiAndrea, left, and Mary Kay Kriese, right, on Aug. 22, 1980.

Raiderette Vintage Goodness

Thank you very much to Patrick, for directing us to this amazing photo of the 1961 Oakland Raiders Cheerleaders. The hat, the fishnets, the sash, the corset, the polka dots…what I wouldn’t give to see this in color.

The Raiders’ cheerleaders perform at a game on Sept. 26, 1961, at Candlestick Park.

Click here to check out the article that goes with, “Raiders’ home headaches: From 1960 in S.F. to today”.

Throwback Thursday: Honoring the Green Bay Packers Cheerleaders Choreographer

Longtime area dance instructor Shirley Van (front center) will be honored at a tribute in Green Bay Saturday. Her body of work includes nine years working with Packers cheerleaders. / Submitted photo

Longtime Green Bay dance instructor Van to be honored at tribute

By Nathan Phelps
Green Bay Press Gazette
June 4, 2014

Thousands of people, including Green Bay Packers cheerleaders, have learned dance from veteran instructor Shirley Van for decades.

Now the 86-year-old is being honored for her work in the community. Her dance studio, Shirley Van’s Dance Studio, was founded in the 1950s and operates a location in Allouez and has plans to reopen a location on West Mason Street in Green Bay this summer.

“She’s one of those humble servants, not one who always needs a pat on the back for what she does or a standing ovation,” said Corrie Campbell, the business development manager for Shirley Van’s Studios. “It’s nice to be able to pay homage to her and at least give back a little bit to her for what she has done in the community.”

Among her local ties is a nine-year stint as a one of the founding choreographers and instructors with the Green Bay Packers cheerleaders in the 1970s and 1980s.

“She really kind of stepped it up a notch in terms of dance … and established a routine with them,” Campbell said. “She also had players in her classes at one time.”

Shirley Van and her husband, Frank Volm Jr., at a Green Bay Packers Hall of Fame display honoring her work with the Green Bay Packers cheerleaders in the 1970s and 1980s. Sumbitted photo
The team honored Van for her contributions last fall and are co-sponsoring part of Saturday’s tribute.

Van’s body of work includes the formation 40 years ago of the People’s Ballet Company, now the Dance Company, which puts on two major productions annually.

A graduate of St. Norbert College, Van spent six years as an instructor of dance and movement at the college and 16 years as the choreographer for St. Norbert College Music Theatre productions. She also worked with area schools, choreographing dozens of productions.

Van, who learned dance in Chicago, New York and California, considered a career as a professional dancer, but opted to teach.

“It is much more important to pass dance on to others and share what I know than to entertain,” Van said in a 1981 interview with the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

Van is also a co-founder of the Green Bay Chapter of Adventures in Movement in 1970, a program aimed at teaching dance to people with disabilities. That program is expected to be reintroduced at the revamped Green Bay studio later this year.

“She brought dance back here. She studied with some of the greatest masters in jazz dance and traditional ballet,” said Campbell, a former student. “When she brought that back here, it really raised the level of dance in the community.”

Van’s studio is a non-competitive studio and focuses on dance company productions.

“Many of our students have gone on to dance professionally, or semi-professionally, and if they haven’t … (students) have a great ability to carry themselves well in public and in public speaking,” Campbell said.

Van, who still teaches in the studio, is passing the torch and legacy of the business to many of her students.

“It’s a good time, but it’s a bittersweet time, too,” Campbell said. “She’s done so much for our community.”

Footage From The 1976 Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Tryouts

In this segment, taped for KDFW’s “Eyewitness News” in 1976, Dallas-based reporter Jim Ruddy covers the first open tryouts held by the Dallas Cowboys to select the team’s cheerleading squad for the 1976-1977 football season. The tryouts, which took place at Texas Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Irving, drew over 130 cheerleading hopefuls. Included in the footage are interviews with several of those cheerleading hopefuls, as well as scenes from the selection process.

Sixers Dream Team: Keeping it in the Family

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a request for help with identifying dancers who have other family members who have also danced or cheered professionally. I was convinced it was happening a lot more often than we knew. And the dance team from Philadelphia 76ers proved me right. Rebecca Timms from the Sixers organization came through for me in a way I never imagined. She gave me sisters, she gave me cousins, and she gave me a mother/daughter duo. Complete with funny hat. And one of them is the coach! This, my friends, is what we call a HOME RUN. In scrabble, this would be a quadruple word score.

First up, we have cousins Erica and Nicole, both team captains during their time on the squad.


Erica joined the team in 2006 and danced with them through 2012. She was a captain during her last two years on the team. Nicole joined the team during Erica’s last year. She is currently in her third year on the squad, and her first year as a captain.

Next we have sisters Danielle and Valerie.

Danielle became a Sixers Dancer in 2007 and retired after the 2012-13 season. She was a captain during her last two years on the team. Valerie joined the team in 2011, when the name changed from the Sixers Dancers to the Dream Team, and she is currently in her third season on the team.

And finally, we have mother and daughter Dayna and Cheryl

Cheryl was on the team back when they were called the Liberty Belles. I’m not sure what year this photo came from, but the hair is telling me late 60s/early 70s. Dayna danced for seven seasons before retiring in 2006 as Assistant Captain. Three years later, she was hired as head coach of the Sixers Dancers, and is in her sixth year in that role.

There is clearly a lot of family love going on here, so if you have a sister (or a cousin) and the both of you can dance your tails off, get thee to Philadelphia. I’m not kidding. The Sixers Dream Team auditions are next month, with a pre-audition workshop scheduled for June 7th. (Click here for audition details.)

Mom, Daughter Both Cheerleaders for Broncos in Super Bowl

A few days late, but still worth watching

KOAA.com
February 2, 2014
CLICK HERE to watch the video

It’s the chance of a lifetime for any NFL cheerleader, a chance to cheer and perform at the Super Bowl. And for a mother and daughter from Denver, it’s an honor they both get to share.

Brittany Anderson grew up hearing the stories of her mom proudly cheering for the Broncos in the 1970’s.

“I just remember always talking about my mom. The fact that she went to the Super Bowl. And just being all so proud of her,” said Brittany Anderson.

Now it’s Brittany’s turn, she’s headed to the Super Bowl as a Broncos cheerleader, just like her mom did so many years ago.

“Then now it’s just like, she can be proud of me for following in her footsteps,” said Brittany.

Brittany and her mom, George Anderson, describe it as a wonderful bond they both can share.

“It will be the most exciting thing that she’s ever done,” said mom George.

George Anders had her exciting moment in 1978, when the Broncos played the Cowboys in the Super Bowl. She wants her daughter to enjoy the experience, but she’s also hoping for something else this time around.

“They want a victory. That’s something I didn’t get so that’s the thing I want for her the most! Is a victory!” said George.

Brittany is hoping for the same thing, “I always say that because they didn’t win back then… She had a child to go to the Super Bowl and so that we can get the win.”

The program might be a bit different 36 years later. George said the dancing is much harder now. But their passion for the Broncos is as strong as ever, and Brittany is grateful for what her mother passed on to her.

‘The heart for the Broncos. And all of her talent and support,” said Brittany of her mom.

The entire Anderson family is in New Jersey for the big game to cheer on Brittany and, of course, the Broncos.

SI.com: NFL Cheerleaders, Weeks 8-10

Lots of photos with some halloween action, some pink action, and some vintage action! Click here for week 8, here for week 9, and herefor week 10.


This season the Bucs cheerleaders have had occasion to whip out various parts of their old uniforms. These tops were only worn during the 2003-04 NFL season. This is probably the first time they’ve seen the light of day since. I have no idea why they wore these, but I’m glad they did. They are super-cute.

Skirting the cheerleader issue in Green Bay

By Bob McGinn
The Journal Sentinel
Novmber 1, 2013

Green Bay — It has been almost 30 years since the Green Bay Packers outfitted an official cheerleading squad in contemporary attire and had its members support the team in games at Lambeau Field and Milwaukee County Stadium.

The Packers got out of the cheerleading business in January 1987 and have no intentions of getting back in.

Instead, management will continue the practice of using a total of 15 to 20 cheerleaders from nearby St. Norbert College and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay that has been in effect since the mid-1990s.

“Most of us feel the college cheerleaders fit with the image we want to project,” Packers President Mark Murphy said Friday. “It’s wholesome. I hear mostly good things about our cheerleaders from fans. I think they find it kind of quaint, to be honest.”

The collegiate cheerleaders dress in modest uniforms supplied by the Packers.

Green Bay is one of six franchises in the National Football League without an official squad. The cheerleading units for the other 26 teams often have been described as eye candy on the sidelines.

The Packers tried that to a degree in the early-to-mid 1980s after their Green Bay Sideliners were given more provocative garb, including go-go boots and short shorts.

“They were attractive,” said Bob Harlan, the club’s president before his retirement in 2007. “We dressed them not daringly, but they were fancier than the college cheerleaders, obviously. We did change their outfits as the seasons went along.

“We didn’t think we could compete with the Cowboys, but we thought we wanted to at least try to add some atmosphere. Our fans let us know they didn’t want us to be parading girls out there looking like the Dallas cheerleaders. And that was never our intention.”

It’s possible, according to Harlan, that the Packers still could have an official squad were it not for the internal bickering that led to disbandment of the Sideliners after the 1986 season.

“It might have been the type of program we might have kept in existence and maybe turned over to our marketing department,” Harlan said.

Shirley Van, the cheerleading director who ran a dance studio in Green Bay, and many team members came to be at each other’s throats.

“The relationship was getting worse by the day,” Harlan said. “It just was not worth keeping. So we finally just shut it down.”

At the same time, the front office deep-sixed the career of Packy Packer, who had a brief stint as the club’s official mascot.

In January 1989, Harlan and staffers met with three groups seeking approval to resurrect a cheerleading team. The Packers told them no, and it became a dead issue after that.

In an informal locker-room poll Friday, four players favored the status quo while three preferred a return to official cheerleaders.

“I think our fans are unique in that they don’t need a big circus atmosphere,” said tight end Ryan Taylor. “Because they’re football purists and enjoy the game as is.

“I don’t know that it would add anything. There are other teams that want to put on more of a show, I suppose, because they’re worried about selling tickets. There’s another team in our division that feels it has to put on a show.”

Taylor had to be referring to Minnesota because Chicago and Detroit don’t have cheerleaders.

Cornerbacks Tramon Williams and Micah Hyde plus defensive end Datone Jones enjoy game day as is in the NFL’s smallest city.

“I thought those were our pro cheerleaders, I really did,” Jones said. “When I’m out there I’m not really engaged with the cheerleaders. But I saw tradition and love the way the whole atmosphere is.”

On the other hand, some players think professional cheerleading would play well at Lambeau Field.

“I would definitely like to see it go down to five with Green Bay adding a team, yes,” said quarterback Aaron Rodgers. “I think it’d be great.

“Take the last home game, for example. They showed a couple cheese bikini-clad women in the stands and the fans went nuts. The ‘Bikini Girls’ in general, I don’t know if they’ve shown pictures of them yet on the Jumbotron, but they’re a big hit.

“I’m all for it. No offense to the (college) girls. They do a great job.”

Defensive end B.J. Raji said he was “shocked” upon arrival in 2009 to find out the Packers had no official cheerleading squad, something he regards as “synonymous with the game of football.”

Raji and tight end Andrew Quarless said a more sleek approach to cheerleading would only enhance the experience for fans.

“First of all, it would give some females job opportunities in the area,” said Quarless. “I think it would make it feel more NFL-like.

“Not to say that they don’t do a great job. They do, and they do it for nothing.”

The Packers began using cheerleaders from city high schools as early as 1931. Under Vince Lombardi, the Packers started their first official squad in the late 1950s, and the name went from Packerettes to Golden Girls, and then back to Packerettes.

Meanwhile, the Cowboys and general manager Tex Schramm debuted their cheerleaders in 1972. It brought sex appeal and jazz dancing to the sidelines, and shortly thereafter many teams began to follow suit.

Today, 10 of the 26 teams with cheerleaders have names for their squads, from “Jills” in Buffalo to “Saintsations” in New Orleans and “Sea Gals” in Seattle.

Murphy indicated that some teams benefit significantly from the allure of their cheerleaders by increased page hits on their web sites to sales of swimsuit and even lingerie calendars.

“Not to be critical of anybody,” said Murphy, “but you look at what some of the other teams do with their cheerleaders and I just don’t think we’d feel comfortable doing some of those things.

“I have heard complaints about our cheerleaders: ‘What do they bring? Why don’t we get modern cheerleaders? Look at all the other teams and how they use them.’

“But more (fans) say this really fits in our image in Green Bay and what we want to portray.”

SILENCED CHEERS

Five NFL teams besides the Green Bay Packers have no official cheerleading squads. All six teams are in cold-weather locations. The only dome team is Detroit. Cleveland, which joined the NFL in 1950, is the least tenured of the franchises.

CHICAGO: The Bears have no cheerleaders. In the late 1970s to early 1980s, they had a unit called the “Honey Bears.”

CLEVELAND: The Browns have no cheerleaders and new owner Jimmy Haslam is against ever having them. Owner Art Modell experimented with cheerleaders way back, but the cavernous size of old Cleveland Stadium and the extreme cold ended that.

“We had them one year,” Pat Modell, his wife, once said. “They looked crazy. It was ridiculous.”

In recent years the Browns tried high school cheerleaders but the practice was discontinued by Haslam.

DETROIT: The Lions had a traditional squad at Tiger Stadium in the 1960s, and then used different high school troupes during its stay at the Pontiac Silverdome from 1975-2001. They have had no cheerleaders at Ford Field.

NEW YORK GIANTS: Other than a brief trial in the early 1960s, the Giants haven’t had cheerleaders.

“Philosophically, we have always had issues with sending scantily clad women out on the field to entertain our fans,” Giants co-owner John Mara told the New York Times in 2010.

He added: “Some teams are comfortable with not only having cheerleaders but selling cheerleader swimsuit calendars or, in a couple cases, lingerie calendars. It’s not something you’re going to see the Giants do. Not while I’m around, anyway.”

PITTSBURGH: Other than a four- or five-year period in the late 1950s when cheerleading squads from Robert Morris University appeared at games, the Steelers have not had cheerleaders.

Old cheerleaders never die if memories of friendship and glamour live on

Cheryl (top) and Beth
Marybeth Hagan
Newsworks.org
Sept 30, 2013

A new season for the Philadelphia Eagles always brings back bitter-fun memories of my friend Cheryl Frey.

We danced together as cheerleaders on the sidelines of Eagles games in their 1979-80 season. NFL cheerleaders were still a novelty at the time. Eagles fans dubbed their pom-pommers the “Liberty Belles.”

One could always count on Cheryl for a laugh in between twirls, kicks and flashes of white and kelly green. Mischief should have been her middle name. When not joking or waving to the guys seated in the end-zones, Cheryl teased her teammates. I remember her holding her pom-poms under her nose and calling out “Get a load of Mary Poppins!” referring to one of our seemingly wholesome teammates, who, rumor had it, was fooling around with one of the Phillies.

Eagles’ fans undoubtedly fancied blue-eyed, blond-haired Cheryl and her Farrah Fawcett tresses. Two out of the four newspapers circulating in Philly back in those days — the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin and the Philadelphia Journal — ran promotional contests in which readers voted for their favorite Liberty Belle. Cheryl won each contest by a landslide.

Hard work, hard play

Being a dancing glamor girl was not always that glamorous. I can still hear our coach, Sharon Sweeney, screeching “SHAAAKE IT!” as she drilled dance routines into our well-coifed heads during long practices on the concrete floors of a Veterans Stadium hallway.

We shook our way to Tampa Bay for the NFC Divisional Playoff courtesy of Coach Dick Vermeil and his coaching staff, the talented team led by quarterback Ron Jaworski, and Eagles’ owner the late Leonard Tose. We cheerleaders were a pet project of Tose’s then girlfriend and later wife, Caroline Cullum (currently Mrs. Sidney Kimmel — as in Kimmel Center). Ever the generous gent, Mr. Tose picked up the tab for airfare and hotel accommodations in Tampa for 40 cheerleaders so that we could decorate the sidelines and perform dance routines at the game.

The Bucs beat the Eagles 24-17. That did not stop a “Hey, Hey Tampa Bay” fanatic from throwing a few oranges at our squad from the stands. And they talk about Eagles fans!

All good things …

Being a Liberty Belle lost its appeal for me after Cheryl died on Jan. 10, 1980. Cheryl’s husband Scott had a nickname for the Buffalo, N.Y., native that proved to be prophetic. “Life in the fast lane Frey” died in the wee hours of the morning when her car slammed into a tractor trailer as she drove on the wrong side of a major highway in Chester County. It was a tragic end to a night on the town at Philadelphia hotspot Elan, in the Warwick Hotel.

If Cheryl and I had cavorted together that evening, she might have stayed overnight in my Center City apartment, as she did on other occasions. Plus, the fans’ favorite might have danced with us at Super Bowl XV the following January when the Birds played the Oakland Raiders at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans. The Big Easy is Cheryl’s kind of town.

Sideline entertainers hardly hold a place in NFL or Philadelphia Eagles history. Still, this chapter starring my deceased cheerleading chum and her joie de vivre is one that I’ll not forget.