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.

The 2009-10 Golden State Warrior Girls are now online. Click here to learn more about the team!

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Go behind the scenes at the shoot for the team’s 2009-10 Swimsuit calendar. The release party is on December 5th. Click here for details.

By Christopher Leydig
The San Mateo Daily Journal
September 14, 2009

Looks can often be deceiving, especially when somebody is sporting cowboy boots, hiked-up hot pants or fitted leotards nearly every night.

Take Thera Santos, a 24-year-old Foster City resident, who, while being an electrical engineer by day, also happens to don an NBA cheerleader outfit for the Golden State Warriors by night. A pristine example of brawn — or rather beauty — meets brains.

“Sometimes my dance life seems like a secret identity,” confessed the petite 5-foot-2-inch Santos. “I never imagined myself as a professional dancer, but I’ve met the best of friends through this,” she said.

Santos, who grew up in Milpitas and attended college at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, presently works at Space Systems/Loral in Palo Alto, inspecting defective satellite components as a failure analyst during her early morning shifts. Previously, she also worked as a failure analyst in aerospace defense with Raytheon in El Segundo, scrutinizing missile duds.

“I’ve just always loved to build things,” said a smiling Santos. “My parents were always supportive of whatever I wanted to do, but it was my mom who put me in ballet and dance classes.”

Those lessons, which began at the age of 3, accompanied Santos for 12 years, but were left behind during high school at Notre Dame in San Jose. With intensified focus and determination to her college studies, Santos reintroduced dance as a minor along with her electrical engineering degree, but eventually substituted it for business.

“To study dance and to practice it are two different things,” she said.

Despite the delusion, Santos stood loyally by her lifelong passion, opting for recreational dance in lieu of the official classes which were not sufficiently exercising the most enjoyable part of the practice: Performance.

Now, with her third successful Warrior Girl audition behind her, Santos can settle into the uniform she never envisioned wearing.

“I never dreamt of auditioning, it was always just a hobby,” she said.

That capricious disposition changed about three years ago, though, when she attended a clamoring, sold-out game-six playoff series and watched the Warrior Girls perform.

“I thought, ‘I could do that,’” she said.

Following the Warriors’ success that year, open auditions turned out especially large, and heartbreaking; a group of about 250 girls were truncated to 16 within a week. But regardless of the odds, Santos’ skill and personal prerogative to always place herself in the instructor’s front row paid dividends. She won her spot, yet even in her third year butterflies still flutter about.

“Every time I perform I get so nervous. Everything changes, it’s always something new. I’m scared of missing a step, slipping or putting my foot in the wrong place,” said Santos, recollecting having to freestyle a forgotten routine for an endless minute.

Of course, working with the NBA is not all stress; there are definitely perks. Santos has had the pleasure of traveling abroad to China, Japan and most recently Italy to perform, teach and promote basketball’s developing leagues around the globe.

“Even with tight schedules, we always find ways to sightsee,” said Santos, recalling how she managed to squeeze in a 6 a.m. trip to the Great Wall of China prior to work hours.

There are now Warriors fans worldwide, but none match the intensity of those who show up to the home games at Oracle Arena. Santos said they are the best, at least when they are not heckling her.

“It’s a tough position sometimes,” she said, citing the bothersome habits of fans who ask for copious pictures, endless hugs, her number or even follow back to her car while she tries to maintain an affable aura. “Oh yes! You have to carry pepper spray.”

Santos is many things, but if she executed a flawless routine in an empty arena with no fans around to see it, would that make her a cheerleader, or just some engineer possessing extraordinary rhythm and questionable access to a vacated stadium? Santos’ answer would be neither.

“My calling in life is to be a role model to someone,” she said. “The good influence that you put on others is most important to me.”

By Kaz Nagatsuka
Staff writer
Japan Times
8/6/2009

Yoshimi Isohata took a bit of a detour. But she has no regrets and feels blessed to have this Golden opportunity.

After enduring a difficult but fruitful time last season, the 27-year-old Japanese cheerleader has returned to the Golden State Warriors’ cheerleading team, the Warrior Girls, this time as a full-squad member for the upcoming NBA campaign.

Isohata vividly described the exciting, precise moment that she saw her picture and name on the club’s official Web site on July 24 while she was at San Francisco International Airport on her return trip to Japan.

“I kept refreshing the page from 10 minutes before the announcement, which was supposed to come at noon,” Isohata joked in Tokyo last week. “I became worried because it wouldn’t appear . . . But eventually it came in about 10 past 12!”

Isohata had already passed the cheerleading auditions for the Warriors last year, but her action was limited because she wasn’t granted a proper visa. And so she had to spend the season as an intern.

This wasn’t Isohata’s original plan, but she had certainly reached the point where she dreamed of being for the upcoming season.

Isohata confessed that although she knew what she would have to go through during the four-day auditions, which she says kicked off with some 130 applicants in mid-July, she still had some jitters because there are no clear “answers” to pass the tryout.

“Every year the director sets principles and applies new things,” said Isohata, who was formerly a cheerleader for the All-Mitsubishi Lions of the Japanese corporate football league while working at an insurance company. “So you need some luck, and you can’t really predict what you’ve got to do in order to pass. There are no formulas as in mathematics.”

But this much is certain: Isohata’s fellow Warrior Girls realize her dedication to the team has made a big impact.

“I definitely think she’s actually made us all work harder because she practices so much and she’ll stay after practice (and) she’ll be there early learning,” Shania Yamada, who made the 2009-10 squad for her fourth straight year, said of Isohata during the team’s visit to the bj-league finals in May.

“And I think her morale toward everything has motivated us to want to be on top of all of our routines,too.”

Finally, Isohata, who spent parts of her childhood in Osaka, Singapore and Dalian, China, showed no negative feelings about taking a circuitous route to becoming a professional cheerleader in America. Instead, she appears to appreciate that she gained precious experience and now looks forward to her latest challenge in life.

“This is just the start line,” she concluded. “I still have things that I have to work on, while I’m very much looking forward to many things, including visiting places that I couldn’t go last season, looking forward to community activities and events exchanging with the fans. It’s going to be a rewarding year for me.”

New Golden State Warrior Girl Christi was previously a two-year veteran of the AFL San Jose SaberKittens.

[Golden State Warrior Girls]

The 2009-10 Golden State Warrior Girls have been announced. The squad is made up of 10 vets and 8 rookies. Although you may recognize one of the rookies:

Karlee was a co-captain and three-year veteran of the NLL San Jose Stealth Bombshells

New team here.

The 2009 Warrior Girls have been selected! This year’s team includes ten veterans and eight rookies. Congratulations ladies!

Host Aubrey Aquino is back in the tropics on Paradise Island for Episode 8. This week’s Sideline Distraction is Shania, who’s pulling in overtime duty around the world for Golden State as a member of the Warrior Girls!

I actually got to meet Aubrey back in June in Atlanta. She was staying in the same hotel that the P-R-O Convention was being held at. She was in town working on a future episode of “On The Flipside”.

Aubrey told me that she’s had some interest from the networks in her show, but she’s taking it cautiously because it is her baby.

[On The Flipside]

[Aubrey Aquino]