200 women audition for 34 spots as Bucs cheerleaders

By NEIL JOHNSON
The Tampa Tribune[Photos]

There wasn’t much time to impress the judges – just a few seconds of pulsing dance music and spinning steps for nearly 200 women who want to be cheerleaders for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this season – even if there isn’t actually a season.

The team needs to find as many as 34 cheerleaders and held open tryouts today, saying the Bucs will field a cheerleading squad even if a labor dispute snuffs out the 2011 season.

The dispute could eliminate all or some of the National Football League’s games in 2011, meaning the cheerleaders wouldn’t have a stadium to cheer in on Sundays or a crowd to watch their performances.

But game-day performances are just part of a cheerleader’s job.

“Game day is such a small portion of what you do,” said Lauren Spires, who at 26 is trying for her fourth turn as a Bucs cheerleader.

Though known for their dance moves on Sundays, cheerleaders make appearances at charity or private events two or three times a week.

“You can’t say it’s just game day. It’s the whole package,” said Spires, who was on the Bucs cheerleading squad in 2003, 2005 and 2006 and has used her experience as a cheerleader to help establish a dance studio with her husband that features sport dancing.

Cheerleaders are required to perform 50 hours of charity work during the season, said Catherine Boyd, a five-season cheerleader who is now the Buccaneers’ manager for cheerleading and mascots.

The ongoing labor dispute has cast a lot of uncertainty onto the upcoming season, whose fate now rests with the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear the NFL’s appeal of a lower court ruling that lifted the lockout last week.

While the lockout bars teams from doing things such as talking to players, the Bucs are moving forward with peripheral moves, such as getting the cheerleading squad in place.

“It’s a busy time for the team. We’re going to move forward as planned,” said Boyd, one of five judges who watched the women’s freestyle dancing and hip-swaying, shoulder-swinging, hair-flinging struts across the stage, called “jazz walks.”

Becky Hedblom isn’t worried about the prospect of a shortened season. The 31-year-old from Minnesota would have more to think about, if she made the squad, such as moving to Tampa.

“I try not to let that affect me,” said Hedblom, a former Minnesota Vikings cheerleader who didn’t make that team’s squad this year. She decided to try out for the Bucs because the dance style here is similar to what the Vikings cheerleaders do.

Canceling or shortening the 2011 season would affect those who make the cheerleading squad – cheerleaders only get paid for home games.

Out of the 200 women who tried out today, 100 will find out by Monday if they will move on to the next round of competition, on Saturday.

They’ll join about 20 members of last year’s squad and about 30 from practice and conditioning sessions asked to come Saturday.

The final auditions will be May 12.