Family First for Titans Cheerleader Coach
By Jan Linville, Correspondent
Columbia Daily Herald
10/5/2011
If the Titans were looking for someone who had walked the walk when they were searching for a Director of Cheerleading, they found exactly that in Brentwood resident Stacie Kinder who is now entering her eighth season with the organization.
She enrolled in her first dance class at age three, was dance team captain in high school, studied ballet at the Washington School of Ballet and the list goes on and on.
“I am not a traditional cheerleader,” she said. “In the NFL, they call this cheerleading because that’s what the public understands, but all professional cheerleaders are dancers because our venues in the professional arena are so large you can’t hear us. And the women are almost, in my opinion, too old. I mean, if I told my girls to do a toe touch or turn a cartwheel, they would revolt. They wear three and a half inch heels — they’re not going to do ‘go-fight!’”
After some trips to New York, Kinder said she realized after high school that she probably wasn’t as talented as she needed to be to pursue a career as a professional entertainer/dancer, so she attended the University of Virginia (UVA), graduating in 1995 with a double major in finance and marketing and a minor in French. While at UVA, she served as dance team captain her junior and senior years and led the Cavalier squad to a rank of 17th in the nation. She also used her extensive dance background to compete in Fitness America finishing second at Fitness Atlanta and then ranking in the top 25 at the national competition in Redondo Beach, California.
After relocating to Nashville in 1996, Kinder auditioned for the inaugural AFL Nashville Kats Dance Team where she cheered and served as captain for 1997 and 1998. During the 1999 season, she continued to cheer, served as the dance team’s director and was in charge of sponsorship marketing for the Kats. She left the organization in 2000 to focus on her first child and pursue other interests. When the Titans called her in 2004 about the Director of Cheerleading position, she was ready to get back into the industry.
“My job right now is actually a great culmination of my talents,” said Kinder. “I feel like I’m a pretty good businesswoman and running cheerleaders, you know, we’re our own little business entity. We have our own revenue streams and I’m always selling a product whether it’s appearances or calendars or tickets to a calendar release party or audition party, so I’m marketing and I’m managing a pretty large budget. It’s great to be able to use the business degree I have in culmination with my dance/entertainment background.”
Kinder also produced the Music City Bowl’s halftime show for six years until her second son was three and she was just too busy with her children and the Titans to continue producing the show. She has also been involved in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade and the Aloha Bowl in Hawaii and is currently choreographing for a band job in Manchester. When interviewing a potential Titans cheerleader, she looks for a woman who is the total package.
“Obviously, she’s got to be able to dance,” she said. “Does she need to have an extensive professional dance background? No. Do some of them? Yes. Brooke owns her own dance studio in Kentucky and does very well. Jessi is probably the best dancer we’ve ever had. She was on ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’ spent six years in Los Angeles, has done television programs and danced with Christina Aguilera, so those two are phenomenal dancers. Angela is a really smart woman, a banker, and she’s a good dancer, but she’s not a dancer by trade. She moved to Nashville to sing. Stephanie is the communications director for Cracker Barrel Corporation and she’s a wife and a mother and also a good dancer. So we’re looking for women who clearly can dance and keep up with choreography, but they also have to have a beautiful physique, a beautiful face and be pursuing something professionally that is driving them to be a better member of society and a contributing member of society. Almost all of them are college educated or in college and, if they didn’t go the college route, they went a route like Jessi where she really focused on her dance in LA and really built up a professional career or like Brooke who opened her own studio and focused on that. I just don’t hire women who are kind of floundering around who happen to be great dancers. They really have to have their real life going down a goal-oriented path.”
The audition process is a month long with the final audition open to the public at the Wildhorse Saloon. Before the finals, the field is narrowed down to 48 from over 200 women. Current cheerleaders have to audition every year to keep their spot. Eight years is the longest anyone has ever stayed on the squad and the average cheerleader stays three and a half seasons.
Kinder and the cheerleaders have their own training camp, rehearsing for two to three hours five days a week through the summer. During the preseason, that goes down to three days a week and then, by the regular season, rehearsals are two nights a week. They arrive at 7:45 am on game day and are the last to leave. Kinder spends the day primarily on the field.
“I’m my own water girl,” she laughed. “We don’t have an equipment person so I make sure all the girls are well-watered! I try to walk around the field because the girls are divided into groups, so I try to spend a little time watching each group and coaching them.”
Kinder and the cheerleaders just finished their Junior Titans cheerleading program which is a huge undertaking. They had 100 little junior cheerleaders and junior T-racs performing on the field during halftime of the Broncos game. The cheerleaders also keep busy with paid appearances and charity work within the community. Each cheerleader is obligated to do ten charity events throughout the season.
“There are 25 girls and with each girl doing 10 events, that’s over 200 events in the community,” said Kinder. “There are a lot of things the players can’t do because they’re so focused on game day, so we want to maintain that charitable presence in the Nashville community on behalf of the Titans.”
NFL cheerleaders don’t travel to away games, but the Baltimore Ravens squad chose to come to Nashville on their own recently to watch their game against the Titans.
Titans owner Bud Adams with Stacy Kinder
There are no age limits for cheerleaders, but you have to be 18 and a high school graduate in order to try out. The oldest woman to make the team was 38. Kinder likes to have a few girls over 30 to anchor the team and said she would never have a team with nobody over 30. There is an alumni association for past cheerleaders that is very active. They have a bi-monthly newsletter, volunteer to help at events and also do charity work of their own. Kinder enjoys seeing how each woman grows professionally while on the squad.
“One of my favorite things about what I do is the development of professional women,” she said. “Helping them go from being 22 or 23 and just getting out in the world, to then leaving me at 26 or 27 as a more polished professional woman who has real goals that are defined and knowing she is going to be a successful member of the professional society in whatever it is she chooses. It’s rewarding for me to see that metamorphosis happen – to see all the potential that she’s got in her little interview when she sits here and then see all that she can become after she’s been a Titans cheerleader.”
Kinder helps her girls polish their resumes and also writes recommendations for them.
“I think when people talk to a cheerleader in a job interview, they realize what an incredible manager of time she is and that is impressive to an employer,” she said. “If she was able to manage either a school career or a different career and this at the same time, then clearly she’s going to be a great employee — and it doesn’t hurt that she looks great!”
Originally from Prince William County on the Virginia side of Washington D.C., Kinder and her husband, Gary, moved to Brentwood in 2008. Gary was on the Olympic team in 1988 and won the trials in the decathlon. He now owns Kindersport Elite Athletics (www.kindersportonline.com) in Brentwood where he trains a lot of Williamson County athletes including Kevin Lazas who just won the Pan Am Games and is the American Junior record holder in the decathlon. The couple has two sons, Jett, 10, and Canon, 5. While she feels her job is amazingly awesome, she still makes time to make family her priority from working at the hot dog booth at Lipscomb Elementary’s Fall Fest to being the ‘mystery reader’ at Canon’s preschool.
“It’s a challenge to balance everything, but even if it means working on the computer at home until midnight after I’ve come home at 10:30 pm from Titans cheerleading practice, I’m always going to make sure I’m a mother to my boys. I want to be a role model to other women and show them that with good time management and prioritizing, you can excel in your career and stay very involved with your children’s lives as well.”
Coming from the Washington D.C. area, Kinder loves the size of Brentwood and that it is such a great place for families and children. She grew up a Redskins fan, but said the city was so big that you never met any of the players out on the town.
“In DC, it was never even a thought that I’d meet a Redskin,” she said. “It was just so huge, but because so many of our players live in Brentwood, you do see them. Two of my best moments in having this job were when we played the ‘Skins in preseason and Joe Gibbs had come back and was coaching for them again. I got to meet him in the tunnel and I just started crying. He was just such a hero of mine and I said, ‘you’ve made my night’ and he said, ‘no, you’ve made mine.’ And then one day downstairs in the lobby, Joe Theismann was there. He didn’t assume that I knew who he was and he said, “I’m Joe Theismann’ and I said, ‘yeah, I know!’”
Even with all of her other responsibilities, Kinder is also the co-founder and director of Professional Cheer and Dance and on the Board of Trustees for the Tennessee Chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. She made that her charity of choice after losing a Kats cheerleader friend to leukemia in 2003 at age 34. She seems to thrive on having a hand in so many activities and thoroughly enjoys her line of work.
“I love my job,” she smiled. “I love the Titans organization. It’s so great to work for them. I adore Mr. Adams – he’s just a ball of fire. He loves his cheerleaders which is great for me. It’s a dream come true.”
Titans cheerleaders are always available for personal appearances and their calendar is now on sale for $15 at www.titansonline.com/cheerleaders.
For more information on the Titans cheerleaders, please visit www.facebook.com/tennesseetitanscheerleaders.
