At Sunday’s Ravens game 6-year veteran Jaime was announced as the team’s Pro Bowl Cheerleader. She is just the second member of the stunt team (as opposed to the dance team) to make Pro Bowl. Jaime is a graduate of West Virginia University and works as a Human Resources Generalist.

[Jaime at BaltimoreRavens.com]

A special Thursday Bud Light Party (to avoid conflicting with New Year’s Eve) featured Danielle and Jen at Chickie’s & Pete’s in South Philadelphia.

And a couple of weeks ago the Miller Lite Away Game Party headed for The Sticky Wicket in Hamilton NJ (right on the border between Philly fans and New York fans), with Cheryl and Kelsey.

[Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders]

Mandisa is a four-year veteran of the Flight Crew. She’s been with the squad from the very beginning. She earned her BFA from Rutgers and works as an executive assistant for a private wealth management firm.

[Mandisa at NewYorkJets.com]

The Buffalo Jills broke out the Santa outfits for their final home game of the season.

All the photos and video at the Buffalo Pro Cheer Blog.

Megan is a two-year veteran of the Texans Cheerleaders, but danced throughout high school and college, on a cruise ship and in the NBA and AFL. She works as a Title Insurance Escrow Officer.

[Megan at HoustonTexans.com]

By Shawn Donnelly
Esquire

After heartbreak on Monday Night Football, some honest analysis from the Atlanta sideline on why Matt Ryan shouldn’t get the MVP, what’s with her coach punting on fourth down, when Brett Favre should hang ’em up, and just how intimidating Drew Brees can be to arch-rivals.

The alleged Sportsman human person of the Year throws two picks at the line of scrimmage in the fourth quarter and you pretty much figure everything tied up: number-one seed, home-field advantage, bragging rights, one too many “Who Dat?” puns. And so the raucous Georgia Dome crowd pretty much did. And then: 90 joyless yards, a 17-14 loss, an eight-game streak snapped, and one more defending champion back in the playoffs.

Alas, perhaps the Falcons can find a silver lining in their late-game nosedive with the help of their rookie cheerleader, Jordan. It is still the holidays (right?), and she’s been brightening the spirits of Atlanta since she was five. Seriously: she twirled a baton at the dome’s opening night. “I remember thinking, this place is huge and everyone is staring at me,” Jordan told us from the locker room after Monday night’s game. “I still think that sometimes.” Herein, the ER tech diagnoses her squad’s evening.

ESQUIRE: What’s going through your mind as Drew Brees is marching his team 90 yards down the field with six minutes left for a go-ahead touchdown?

JORDAN: I was praying that his receivers would drop his passes. He intimidates me as a fan. I think he might have intimidated some of our players, too. He just knows how to get it done when it counts.

ESQ: What about the call by Falcons coach Mike Smith to punt on fourth-and-six from his own 43-yard-line with 2:52 left. Smart?

JOR: I was actually hoping that they weren’t going to punt and that they’d go for it, but then I figured Mike Smith knew what he was doing. That’s the kind of night it was — really exciting, and then it all went bad at the end. I’m still upset. It’s like a bad dream.

ESQ: Looked like there were a few Saints fans in the Dome.

JOR: It irritated me. There are a lot of Saints fans in Atlanta. They are crazy. And they really get on my nerves.

ESQ: Your Falcons have 2-13 Carolina at home next Sunday, with a chance to lock up the NFC and home-field advantage through the playoffs. Confident?

JOR: I think our players will be a little more relaxed. I think playing the Saints, they wanted it so bad, it made them a little nervous. They’ll be ready to go against the Panthers. We beat them before and we can beat them again. I see us blowing them out.

ESQ: Falcons running back Michael Turner picked a bad time to have his first fumble of the year: on the one-yard-line.

JOR: I couldn’t believe it. I was sure we were going to score. It was very un-Michael Turner-like. But it happens, even when you’re a great player. Better now than in the playoffs.

ESQ: Matt Ryan’s numbers: 15-for-29, 148 yards, and one touchdown. Not so good?

JOR: He wasn’t so icy last night. Every player has an off night, and he had one.

ESQ: Roddy White talked a lot of trash on the Twitter before the game, calling New Orleans the “Aint’s” and overrated. Bad move, in retrospect?

JOR: He’s the best receiver in the league, but that wasn’t wise. I think he was a little too excited before the game and he put something out there for the world to see. But people have done worse things on Twitter. I think he realizes he probably shouldn’t have done that.

ESQ: So who do you see in the Super Bowl?

JOR: I see us playing the Patriots. They’ll be tough. They’re playing really well right now.

ESQ: What if the Falcons don’t make it?

JOR: Then I don’t want to watch.

ESQ: You’ll probably have to play the Saints again, in the playoffs.

JOR: I know. Which, in a way, makes it better that we lost to them last night. Because now we won’t have to try to beat them three times in one season, which is really hard to do. Also, I think a loss might be good for us before the playoffs. We hadn’t lost in so long, I think we sort of forgot what it felt like. This way, we won’t take anything for granted.

ESQ: Who’s your MVP pick?

JOR: As much as I’d like to say Matt Ryan, I’ll go with Michael Vick. He’s had a great year.

ESQ: Speaking of the Eagles, they play tonight against the Vikings. Who do you like?

JOR: Eagles. Especially if Favre doesn’t play.

ESQ: Do you think Favre will be playing?

JOR: I highly doubt it. I don’t think he’s passed his concussion test. He needs to give his body a rest. That was a really tough hit he took in Minnesota last week. Personally, I think it’s time for him to retire.

ESQ: Also a coupla bowl games tonight. Insight Bowl pits Missouri against Iowa. Who do you like?

JOR: We’ve got a couple guys from Missouri on our defense, so I’ll say Mizzou.

ESQ: Champs Sports Bowl, West Virginia versus North Carolina State.

JOR: West Virginia. I think they’ve got more talent.

ESQ: On your team bio, you say you’re a fan of Burberry Brit cologne on men. Other than smelling nice, anything a man can do to get your attention?

JOR: I’d say not being intimidated by me. For some reason, a lot of guys are intimidated by me. So I’d say just coming up to me and talking gets you points.

[Jordan at AtlantaFalcons.com]

Nicole is a five-year veteran of the Falcons Cheerleaders. She danced for nationally-ranked James Madison University Dukettes all four years while earning her Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance, and now works as a Financial Analyst.

Nicole also represented the Georgia Force Cheerleaders as part of the Arena Bowl XXI Dream Team.  We’ll have to check the records to see if she’s the first ever make both the Pro Bowl and the Dream Team.

[Nicole at AtlantaFalcons.com]

by Rhonda Gillespie
Chicago Defender

Growing up on the city’s South Side, the granddaughter of a esteemed writer, historian and journalist and surrounded by family flock that included lawyers and other professions, what Imani Josi wanted to be when she grew varied based on how old she was when she pondered it.

As a girl she set her sights on being a cartoonist or some kind of artist. Then a pubescent Josi changed her mind and was sure she’d be an astronomer.

But she ended up doing something that blew her family’s mind yet has turned out to be one of the most rewarding things in her life. Imani Josi is a trailblazing beauty queen.

“That came completely out of left field,” she told the Defender, with a hearty laugh.

Since her days at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Josi, a self-professed nerd – and her family cosigns that – has been entering pageants and capturing crowns.

“At first (my family) had no idea what I was doing or why I was interested in this whole pageant thing,” she said laughing.

But they are now some of her biggest supporters, especially after seeing the work Josi does as a titleholder and the impact it has, and the training she puts in to win the crowns.

“At first, they didn’t quite understand. Now that they get it, they’re totally on board,” she said. “They didn’t know that I was gonna be as serious about it and they didn’t know that I would be pretty good at it.”

Her father gives his input on her gowns and swimsuits for competition and her older sister, an attorney, accompanies Josi as her manager. And her grandfather, former JET magazine editor Lerone Bennett Jr., talks about her everywhere he goes.

Her appetite for pageantry was whet at Howard University.

When she watched a pageant competition at Howard, she thought it a novel – and out of the box—idea for her to compete. Still she entered the Miss Black and Gold pageant anyway. She quickly found out that being a beauty queen is so much more than being beautiful and strutting on a stage.

The Miss Black and Gold pageant was fierce and she got “a lot of really good training…they are serious about their girls being trained well.”

“I got to see a young African American woman get her moment, get the recognition that you don’t see on television. .. upholding everything there is about being a woman and celebrating it,” Josi said of the college competition that became her impetus for getting into pageantry.

Instead of staying in D.C. to compete there, she returned home and set her sights on local
pageants.

Josi recalls thinking out loud, “I’m getting in Miss Chicago this year, I’m going to be in there.” She graduated from Howard in 2008 and the following year, she was crowned Miss Chicago.

“I didn’t know all I was getting myself into, it was a totally different experience. Like when I won it, I didn’t realize that it would be so mind blowing to everybody because one, I was African American and that had not happened in the last 20 years. And the other girls … had all this training in the Miss America system and here’s this random Black girl that comes in and wins Miss Chicago, out of nowhere.”

Earlier this year she was crowned Miss Cook County.

The pageants aren’t strictly about walking in night gowns, strutting in bathing suits or being a pretty face, Josi explained. There is an emphasis on community service and academic scholarship. She has won several scholarships as part of being titleholder.

“What I really like is when I get to go in my community, when I get to meet people,” she said.

To boot, “I haven’t had to pay my student loan bill for the last year … it helps,” she said, speaking of the scholarship money that won and applied to her education costs. Josi graduated from Howard in 2008 and is hoping now to get into a graduate communications program at Northwestern University.

“I really want to get more women of color into pageantry,” Josi said. She explained that she’s learned the ropes in the system and wants to pay it forward to other aspiring women.

Pageants “make you grow in levels that you didn’t even know that you could grow in.”

And she feels she’s a “better person” for it.

“I’m a nerd, I love being a nerd. … The glamour is fun, but I prefer to develop Imani as a person more so than Imani as a glamour queen. When I’m being a beauty queen I feel like I am enjoying being a role model for the young ladies that are around me.”

By day, she is fine in sash and crown, with makeup and fancy figure-flattering cocktail dresses. But when she goes home, “I know how to turn it off. … At first it was very strange trying to balance both segments of what Imani is and what I find important.”

But she has learned to find balance and stay grounded.

A dancer, she has been on a dance squad of some sort since high school. For the 2009-10 Bulls basketball team she was a member of the Chicago Bulls’ Luvabulls.

Her message to girls: Don’t be afraid to try. And then if you do try and you don’t succeed don’t be afraid to get back up and try again.

“A setback is just an opportunity for a glamorous comeback,” the petite, jovial beauty queen said.

Bios are up for all twenty member of the 2010-11 Washington Wizard Girls!

[Washington Wizard Girls]

Kelli performs at the Jaguars game on December 12th

[The ROAR of the Jaguars]