By Tenley Woodman
Boston Herald
Take heart, Patriots [team stats] fans – there’s still hope for a New England victory at the Super Bowl.
Former New England Patriots [team stats] cheerleader and Stoneham native Elizabeth Hanson is a finalist in the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl commercial competition.
Hanson’s team is vying with five others to get the most votes for her original commercial at crashthesuperbowl.com by Jan. 31. The winning ad will air during Super Bowl XLIV and earn a cool $1 million.
“It’s positively ironic that I got to go to the Super Bowl as a cheerleader and now, fingers crossed, I’m going back as an actress in a commercial,” said Hanson, who cheered the Pats on to their 2004 victory in Houston, Texas.
Hanson plays a mourner at a funeral in the bit titled “Casket.”
Her character weeps, but is comforted that her friend received his dying wish: to be buried in a casket full of Doritos.
What the church full of mourners doesn’t know is that he faked his death and is munching away on the snack chips inside the coffin.
Erwin McManus, a pastor from Whittier, Calif., created the concept and shot the commercial on a budget of $3,000.
“I feel like the idea was really unique and the production value is amazing,” Hanson said.
Hanson hopes loyal Pats fans will rally for her and the rest of the “Casket” cast.
“I am disappointed that the Pats aren’t coming to the Super Bowl this year. Maybe I can lift their spirits by making it to the Super Bowl with my commercial. I can represent the team spirit and we can still win,” she said.
Cast your vote at CrashTheSuperBowl.com
Saturday, January 16th the Washington Wizards hosted the Sacrament Kings and four decades of dancers rocked the house at the Verizon Center.
It was kind of a hectic night for Wizards Girls Director and good friend of the blog Jessica Pikulski. Jessica’s two fabulous assistant directors were not present. Kelly was having her baby shower; Brianne was on a ski trip. So Jessica had her normal game day responsibilities, plus getting the Alumni ready, and her adorable, almost 18-month-old-son was in the tunnel, so she had to keep an eye on him.
Bullettes from the 70s and 80s and early 90s, Wizards Dancers from the late 90s and the 00s and Wizard Girls from last season all rocked the house at half-time.
Vikhy now runs the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders Ambassadors program.
Heather is in South Florida this week representing the Redskins Cheerleaders at the 2010 Pro Bowl.
Diane’s a former Bullette and University of Maryland Cheerleader and a grandmother!
After the halftime performance, alumni had to shake their poms one last time in the corners as the cheered on the Wizards and the fans.
It worked. The Wizards defeated the Kings 96-86.
[Bullettes/Wizards Dance Team/Wizard Girls Alumni Photo Gallery]
Two-time Olympian speed skater Allison Baver holds the US record in the 1500m.
In 2000 she tried out for the Philadelphia Sixers Dance Team.
If you can’t see the video click here.
[Allison’s Bio at TeamUSA.org]
Prep Class – Wednesday, January 27 from 8:15-9:30.
The Baltimore Blast Cheerleaders invite girls interested in becoming a part of the 2010 Baltimore Mariners or 2010/2011 Baltimore Blast Cheerleaders to attend a prep class on Wednesday, January 27 from 8:15-9:30.
Location: Du Burns Arena in Canton, Baltimore.
1301 S. Ellwood Ave
Baltimore, MD 21224
What to wear? Please wear something you can dance in and dance sneakers.
What to bring? The prep class is $10.00. Cash or checks will be accepted. Make checks payable to Elizabeth Guaraldo. Other then that just yourselves and some water!
We will be learning some audition choreography that will give you a jump start for auditions on January 31st. You will also have a chance to ask the Director and current squad members questions about being on the squad.
You think you can dance? Ladies, get your game face on! The Orlando Predators are proud to announce tryouts for the 2010 Prowlers Dance Team!
When: Saturday, February 13th (prelims)
Week of February 15th (interviews)
Saturday, February 20th (finals)
Time: 1 PM (registration begins at Noon)
Where: New Dimensions Dance Academy 2462 W. State Road 426 (suite 1040) Oviedo, Fl 32765
Cost: $20 Audition/Application Fee
For more information, contact Jen Menzel at (407) 648-4444 or jmenzel@orlandopredators.com with “Dance Team Tryout Information” in the subject line.
The tryouts will be a three day/step process, so all dancers MUST be available for all three portions of the process. Prospective dancers must be 18 years of age by February 20th. Rounds 1 and 2 will be closed to the public, but round 3 (the finals) will be a public event. Details will be released at a later date.
Congratulations to the newest member of the Virginia Swarm Dance Team, who were selected at Saturday’s auditions.
Line Captains Cassie and Whitney
Director Trisha Hart is still looking for more dancers for her team. Interested parties should check out the UNGL Website. The UNGL season is scheduled to kickoff in March.
By Bill Flick
Pantagraph.com
On a typical game-day Sunday, Cassandra Isaacs is up by 5:45 a.m., on her way to Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis by 6:30 and on the field at 7 sharp Indiana time to begin practicing for the game.
Just like Peyton Manning.
A member of the Indianapolis Colts Cheerleading squad, she works out endlessly, watches her diet continually and even has her body-fat measured randomly, to make sure she’s keeping up a personalized training schedule.
Just like Peyton Manning.
Required to make a specific number of public appearances in a season, she also has 20 different uniforms in her closet and a blue “Colts” on her practice duffle.
Just like Peyton Manning.
Yup, an athletic, striking 25-year-old from Normal, Cassandra Isaacs is a lot like star QB Peyton Manning … well, except for this:
He makes $14 million a year.
She makes about $75 a week.
“If I make enough money just to pay for all the gas to get from Bloomington-Normal to Indy two or three times a week,” Cassandra laughs, “I’m happy.”
Thanks no doubt to movies or Playboy magazine spreads, a common perception these days is that NFL Cheerleaders have glamorous lifestyles, drive BMW coupes and indulge in frolicsome trysts with the players. Apparently the fact is, these are all women practically working for free where, as one NFL Cheerleading Web site puts it, “the locker-room janitress has a better chance of dating a player.”
So why, one might ask, do they do it?
“The minute you put on that rhinestone belt and rhinestone horseshoe and get on the field,” says Cassandra, “there’s an excitement … a ‘wow’ you just can’t quite describe.”
A Normal West High graduate, this is Cassandra’s first year at the helm of a set of blue-and-silver pompoms, boots and the glint of national TV.
If you catch her on Monday, you’ll see a full time employee at State Farm in Bloomington where she works in agency recruiting. If you catch her at night, you might find her at Illinois State University where she is working on her master’s degree.
If you catch her down on the Lucas Oil Stadium sidelines on a day like today, when the Colts battle the New York Jets for the right to play in the Super Bowl, you’ll see one busy person.
On her 32-member dance squad is an account manager and a sales supervisor. There’s a grade school teacher, a dental hygienist and a hospital’s director of patient care.
Twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday, they all travel to Indy (Cassandra is the lone non-Hoosier on the squad) to practice from 6:30 to 9.
As a rule, there are no mothers. Few moms want to put down a baby on Sundays to wave pompoms and do Rockette leg kicks.
Because of the time consumed and the weekend workload, having a serious romantic relationship is difficult, too.
Then there is age. While Brett Favre plays at 40 and Peyton Manning is 33, the average NFL cheerleader is 25.
“Unless I can find a really good plastic surgeon,” says Cassandra, “I doubt I’ll be doing this at 40.”
Yes, for all the glamour and glitz to an NFL Cheerleader, there is the much more unheralded rigor. “You don’t get much sleep. You are constantly busy,” says Cassandra. “I do this because, if not for needing money, I’d dance all day. I love it that much. But it’s not all that you think.”
Yes, on Monday, Peyton Manning will awaken and, if successful today, prepare to head to Miami for the lights, the glamor, the glitter of Super Bowl XLIV. And Cassandra will go back to recruiting insurance agents in Bloomington.
Sis boom … ahhh, real life.
Prize-winning Brownie followed meandering path to happiness as a Chicago Luvabull, published author
By Mary Schmich
Chicago Tribune
Before she went to Stanford, before she was a cheerleader for the Chicago Bulls and before all the rest, Erika Kendrick was Chicago’s Girl Scout cookie queen.
She was 9 the first time she won the crown, the first black girl in Chicago to be the top cookie-seller.
When she angled for her third straight title at age 11, I wrote a story about her, and every January when cookie season rolls around I wonder: Whatever happened to the cookie queen?
Here’s what:
She walks into the Willis Tower Corner Bakery in a hip-hugging black skirt and shiny black stiletto ankle boots.
Buried in her big black bag, under the red-and-white pompons she carries everywhere like charms, is a copy of her novel, “Appetite,” whose first page includes this:
“I whip my achy nakedness around to the crescendo of a bellowing snore. Yikes! A strange man is stretched out on the floor beside me entwined in half my sheet — clearly one of the puzzle pieces misplaced somewhere between the first Bacardi Mojito and last call’s obligatory double shot of Patron.”
This is not the geeky girl in braces I remember.
But at 35, Kendrick is still a Girl Scout. Really. Still pays dues. Teaches Girl Scouts. Says everything she needed to know in life — leadership, networking, teamwork — she learned as a Brownie.
“I’m a Girl Scout nerd,” she says. “Forever.”
Kendrick was visiting Chicago last week, and when I asked to meet, she suggested the tower she still calls Sears. As a girl, she loved to doodle it the way other girls sketch horses.
“This building,” she says, “oh my God, has always represented, ‘I gotta get the hell out of here.’ My mom or dad would take me, or we’d go on a field trip, and being up at the top was, ‘Oh my God, there’s so much out there.’ I lived in a house on the South Side, looked out at a tree.”
Kendrick did get out, but the trail, as she describes it over coffee, has been hilly.
St. Ignatius College Prep to Stanford. Stanford to a Chicago hospital on suicide watch, diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Back to Stanford. Graduation. Then another collapse, more therapy. Then a year as a Luvabull.
“Dancing breathed new life into me,” she says of her cheerleading days. “I thought, OK, I feel normal, whatever that means.”
She felt normal enough to earn an MBA at the University of Illinois. Then the sadness sucked her down again.
“I felt,” she says, “just very lost and empty.”
She drank too much, smoked too much pot and finally went through rehab.
“I don’t have an off switch,” she says, “whether it’s Haagen-Dazs or vodka.”
Then eight years ago, Kendrick moved to New York. The moment she first stepped out of the subway, she cried. She felt happy.
Her breakdowns had taught her that she was most vulnerable when she couldn’t express herself creatively. New York, she sensed, had energy big enough to match hers and would let her feel creative in a way no other place could.
So far, she says, it has.
Random House has published her two novels, “Confessions of a Rookie Cheerleader” and “Appetite.” She’s ready to embark on a college motivational speaking tour. Every other Saturday she teaches writing and self-esteem classes to Girl Scouts.
“I’m always working,” she says. “Unless I’m on a date. And even then I’m thinking about work.”
She also teaches seminars on dating.
“I love dating,” she says. “And then you’ve got banter for Friday night with martinis with your girlfriends: ‘He did what?’ ”
She says she no longer drinks, though. She eats no meat, meditates and plays basketball, all disciplines that, coupled with a creative life, have helped her manage her moods without medication.
“But that’s me,” she’s careful to say. “I don’t say meds are bad.”
In every success story, there’s a seed of trouble. In every story about trouble, there’s a seed of better times. The former cookie queen has lived both.
And as for cookies?
“At 35,” she says, “you’ve got to start watching the Samoas and Do-Si-Dos. But I sneak and eat them.”
She flings her arms out like a cheerleader.
“My favorites are still the thin mints. Oh. My. Goodness.”
New Jersey author and mother of three, Miranda Lobs, M.A., reveals the truth along with a few dozen laughs in “What No One Ever Told Me about Motherhood.”
With quotes from over 100 moms, Lobs provides new and quirky insight into the world of motherhood, including such topics as delivery and recovery, the difference between girls and boys, your kid becoming “that kid,” dealing with other mothers, and what really happens to your marriage after children.
“This book is meant to let you in on the many things that happen in the daily life of a mom but for some reason don’t get discussed,” Lobs writes. “It’s meant to reassure you that you are normal, and most of the things you think you’re the only person going through happen to most of us as well.”
Lobs earned a B.A. in psychology with a minor in communications and an M.A. in psychology, and she currently serves as a psychometrician of a neuromedical institute, conducting psychological testing. A former Miami Dolphins Cheerleader, dance instructor, and choreographer, she lives in Hackettstown, with her family.
[What No One Ever Told Me about Motherhood at Amazon.com]
[Cheerleaders who are authors]
The Baltimore Mariners Cheerleaders are a professional cheerleading team with emphasis on crowd appeal, fan interaction, community involvement and game-day performances.
Tryout Date: January 31, 2010
Location: 1st Mariner Arena
8:30-9:00 Registration – $20.00 (Cash or Money Order)
There will be an application to fill out. Each applicant should bring a full body photo of themselves in their audition outfit or something comparable.
9:00-10:00 Choreography
Audition routine will be taught.
10:00-10:30 Practice
Applicants will have a chance to practice on their own and prepare for their auditions.
10:30-12:00 Auditions
Applicants will audition in small groups in front of a panel of judges.
The team will be decided at the close of auditions and applicants will be notified later that evening.
If you would like to be on the mailing list for information, please email e.guaraldo@baltimoremariners.com
Here are some frequently asked questions about the Baltimore Mariners Cheerleaders:
Q: Are the Baltimore Mariners Cheerleaders more of a dance team or a cheer and stunt team?
The Baltimore Mariners Cheerleaders are more dance oriented with an emphasis on jazz and hip hop. Some girls do tumble, but we do not usually stunt during games.
Q: Do the Baltimore Mariners Cheerleaders get paid?
The Baltimore Mariners Cheerleaders do not receive a paycheck, but do receive other perks such as season tickets, gym membership and tanning. They also get the excitement of performing in front of thousands of fans for the Baltimore Mariners!
Q: What is the time requirement for Baltimore Mariners Cheerleaders? (i.e. practices, appearances, games, etc.)?
Being a Baltimore Mariners Cheerleader is a huge time commitment. Before the season even starts we will be having practices twice a week, community appearances and performances. We have several home games, which are usually held on the weekends. The games are played at the 1st Mariner Arena downtown. On game day, all cheerleaders are expected to arrive an hour and a half before kick off. A large part of being a Baltimore Mariners Cheerleader is our commitment to the community. Attending appearances is mandatory. There will be a mandatory training camp as well as several mandatory photo shoots.
Q: Do the cheerleaders pay for their uniforms?
The uniforms, earrings and poms are on loan to each cheerleader. There will be a required deposit that will be refunded upon receipt of the uniforms at the end of the year. The cheerleaders will have to provide for their boots, dance sneakers and practice gear. There are several fundraising opportunities that the cheerleaders may participate in to cover these costs.
Q:Is there an age limit?
This is no maximum age limit.
Minimum age requirement is 18 by January 31, 2010.
Q: Is there any height to weight restrictions?
You should be in overall great shape. We do not have a height to weight requirement. We have no maximum or minimum weight requirement. Cheerleaders will be working out with our Official Personal Trainer, Kenny Johnson.
Q: Are auditions open to the public?
No. Auditions are closed to the public. This includes family and friends.
Q: What do I need for auditions?
Auditions can run all day. Please bring with you:
•Drink and snack
•Sweat towel
•Make-up & Hair Products
Q: Do you have any prep classes; do I have to take the prep classes to make the team?
We will have prep classes prior to auditions. The date, time and location are to be determined.
•You do not have to take the prep classes in order to the make the team. However, it is recommended as all prep classes are taught by the director and some audition choreography will be taught.
Q: How should I wear my hair and make up?
•Make-up and hair should compliment your features.
•You should wear your hair down.
Q: What will the judges focus on and look for?
•Dance technique
•Performance
•Showmanship and personality
•Dance skills
•Fitness
Q: What should I wear to the auditions?
•Sports bra or crop top with stomach showing.
•Short biker shorts or trunks
•Dance sneakers or jazz shoes
•Flesh colored panty hose or dance tights
•All body piercings should be removed and all tattoos covered
