Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Feature – Part 2

The Girls of Paradise … Ashton and Kelsi
By Mickey Spagnola
Dallas Cowboys Star Magazine
(by way of DallasCowboysCheerleaders.com)
June 16, 2011

Day 7 of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Swimsuit Calendar photo shoot was scheduled for Chico’s Paradise, just south of downtown Puerto Vallarta where photographer Wade Livingston was busy climbing over rocks, through creeks and along a path of bamboo trees trying to find the right spots to shoot Sunni Cranfill and Sasha Agent. Seemingly, for hours.

But back where the crew set up its home base on the patio of an adjacent restaurant, there sat Ashton Torres reading, immersed in trying to keep up with the work she was missing at the University of Texas-Arlington during the seven days of classes she would be out during the calendar shoot, not to mention agonizing over the finals hovering over her head when she would return to school that second week in May.

Ashton Torres

“The last three years have definitely been very difficult,” Ashton says. “I made the team and I’ve been taking 12 to 15 hours a semester, and (going to) summer school when our training camp takes place, so it’s definitely been hard to juggle homework. When you have a job, you work until 5 and stop, then go to practice. But with this, you go to school all day and then study all night.”

That’s after practice.

And Ashton isn’t the only one involved in these marathon days, the sacrifice that must be made to be a part of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders while trying to attain a college education at the same time. There’s Kelsi Reich, Cassie Trammell and Melissa Kellerman, just to name a few.

Let Ashton, who passed on the opportunity to attend Texas A&M and live the big-time college experience just to dance with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, give you a feel for what life is like for the two-year veteran heading into her third season with the squad while taking classes at UTA, especially during the fall when practice lasts at least from 6 to 10 four nights a week, and sometimes longer.

“Say we get out of practice at 10:30, then I get home around 11 or 11:15,” Ashton says. “If I haven’t eaten dinner, I’ll try to eat something small and start my homework, but sometimes it’s so difficult because I’m so exhausted and I just pass out and I have to wake up early to try to get some of that homework done. But I do try to get at least six hours of sleep. Then repeat the whole cycle all over again the next day.”

With an eye toward graduating in May of 2012.

Kelsi knows the routine, too. She’s been doing this for the three seasons she’s been a member of the DCC, attending Dallas Baptist University, normally taking 16 hours a semester.

“It’s hard going to school fulltime and being a cheerleader,” says Kelsi, who grew up in The Woodlands, Texas, from which she moved after making the squad in 2008 and finding a college to attend in the area. “I pretty much go to school all day, then a couple hours of studying and maybe a snack or a nap or work out and then go to practice all night. That’s my routine.

“Then in the offseason we only practice three nights a week (off on Mondays and Fridays) so now I’m doing Monday night classes for five hours. I just never get a night off because I’m either at school or practice. I’m just ready to be done. I’m almost there. I graduate in December – hopefully – if my classes are available. I see the finish line … it takes up a lot of time, but I would never complain about any of it because it’s worth it. You can only be a cheerleader for so many years of your life. Why not suck it up, give up a few years of your life and enjoy all of it.”

Kelsi Reich