Former Peach student on Jags’ dance team

By Angela Woolen
The Macon Sun
Oct. 21, 2009

A former Peach County High School student is now a Jacksonville Jaguars dancer. Jayme Hamilton, 19, of Byron is part of the ROAR, the dance team for the NFL team.

“I love to spread the art of dance to other people who can see a dynamic picture painted with the movement of my body,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton has been dancing for 15 years. She took lessons from Jane Madison, owner of the Madison Studio of Dance Education in Macon, from the fourth grade through her senior year. At Peach County High, she was a member of the Golden Girls dance team for four years. Her senior year, she was the team captain.

For the Jaguar games, the women learn two to three new dances every week. They practice 2 1/2 hours three days a week. Hamilton said she practices at home in her spare time as well.

But she doesn’t have much spare time between dancing and attending Florida State College in Jacksonville, where she studies business administration and dance.

Hamilton’s parents, Jay and Rebecca Hamilton of Byron, attended Sunday’s home football game. They found out their daughter was Cheerleader of the Game and was featured on a full page in the program. The Jaguars’ 31 other cheerleaders chose her for the honor.

“I’m so proud of her,” Rebecca Hamilton said. “She’s not only beautiful outside but inside as well.”

Jayme Hamilton said she auditioned for the Jaguars at the spur of the moment.

“I didn’t quite have the NFL cheerleader sass in my dance steps yet, but I was confident that my dance training background was good enough to make it to the finals,” she said.

Her initial goal was to be a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, Rebecca Hamilton said. She was supposed to attend pre-audition classes in Dallas but instead was busy at her second round of qualifying for the Jaguars.

On her way to the audition preparation class, Jayme Hamilton got a speeding ticket because she was so impatient to get there.

“I had the time of my life,” she said of the audition process.

She said she was chosen from 200 girls who attended the audition. When she found out she was selected, she said she felt like she was “on the phone for four straight hours” telling everyone her news.

Rebecca Hamilton said she used to rock her daughter to sleep to Sandi Patti’s “Beautiful Feet.”

“She’s had beautiful feet all her life,” she said.

Jayme Hamilton has been in numerous fairs and danced a tribute song called “Remember Me” by Mark Schultz after 9/11 in New York City’s Battery Park and Seaport Mall.

She now teaches a dance program at the Jacksonville Golf Course and Country Club. She also teaches ballet and hip hop at First Coast Center of the Arts and Jacksonville Country Day School for children ages 2 through 13.

“Performing is always so much fun,” Jayme Hamilton said.

But someday she hopes to own a dance studio and to continue to teach dance. For now, she will be with the ROAR, making appearances even after the season is done.

“Just because there is no football, does not mean there is no ROAR,” she said.