Former Colts cheerleader, Ashlee Bane, now rooting for YMCA

By John Carlson
The Star Press
8/21/2010

YORKTOWN — When Ashlee Bane shows you pictures of herself dressed in an Indianapolis Colts cheerleader’s outfit, they aren’t ones snapped at a costume party.

She was the real deal.

“It was definitely a time in my life that created a lot of memories,” reflected the Wapahani High School graduate, who happened to be celebrating her 28th birthday on this day. “However, it was a phase of my life.”

In other words, she has a lot more living to do.

Right now, life’s journey has her happily situated as the executive program director at the Yorktown Y, continuing a career in the organization with which she first accepted employment back in graduate school. It’s also a job that, at the same time, has allowed her to embrace a passion that she developed many years earlier.

“I’ve always loved working out,” Bane said.

Holder of two degrees from Ball State University — a bachelor’s in exercise science and a master’s in wellness management — she is in charge of Yorktown’s facility, which is shared with the Munciana volleyball program.

This place, she continued, fosters a real sense of community there.

“At the Y,” she said, “we’re more than just a place to come and run on the treadmill, more than a workout place.”

Of course, if it’s a workout you are looking for, Bane will happily oblige.

Being a person who generally works out a couple of hours a day, five or six days a week, plus having routinely and vigorously danced for three hours at a stretch back in her Colts days, she seems an ideal leader for her Y’s “boot camps.”

“It’s like full-body conditioning, really,” she said.

Is she considered a tough drill instructor by the folks, mostly women, who she puts through their paces?

“I don’t know,” Bane said, then laughed. “I guess.”

Herself a veteran Munciana volleyball player, she’s also adept with a bat, having started swinging one as a T-ball kid who even now enjoys Y coed softball. She also serves as a personal trainer for people who want their workout delivered with some individual attention.

Some Y members want to concentrate on weight loss, for example. Others want a taskmaster overseeing them, she said, forcing them to full physical exertion.

Dogs and dancing

Away from the Y she enjoys dancing and spending time with her husband, Jammie, who shares her workout interest, as well as playing with their two Jack Russell terriers and one toy rat terrier. An active member of The Bridge church, she also recently returned from a volunteer mission to Haiti.

“We did a lot of painting,” said Bane, the former membership director of Muncie’s Downtown Y. “We also visited a lot of villages and orphanages.”

Experiences like that might be what she meant when she said much in life awaits her. Yet, as already noted, she doesn’t deny that her Colts cheerleader days are likely to remain among her favorite personal highlights.

“Nothing will beat being down on the field during the kickoff,” she said.

The last of her four years on the squad was the 2005-2006 season, when the cheerleaders joined the Colts’ players in Japan for The American Bowl.

Flipping through a photo album, she points out pictures of herself with other cheerleaders, airborne riding in an Army Blackhawk helicopter and sharing a quick hug with the man himself, Colts quarterback Peyton Manning.

Looking back on the experience, she admits it would have been nice to stay another season and be rewarded with the ultimate goal in American football – a Super Bowl ring.

Still, she has no regrets.

She will always proudly embrace the label of former Colts cheerleader, she said, and should she ever forget, her grandmother will undoubtedly do it for her.

“She still tells people that I was a Colts cheerleader,” Bane said, laughing.