By Jill Callison
The Argus Leader
Karmen and Kirsten Nyberg, twin sisters and graduates of Lincoln High School and Augustana College, have been named to the Minnesota Vikings cheerleading team.
The Sioux Falls women in the past were cheerleaders for the Sioux Falls Storm Lightning, the local indoor football team.
The Nybergs, 23, are the daughters of Kevin and Linda Nyberg of Sioux Falls. They graduated from Augustana last spring.
“This is a life long dream come true,” Karmen Nyberg posted on her Facebook page.
Any interviews must wait until after a cheerleading team meeting Wednesday night. This year is their first with the team, and they join 33 others.
Be a Washington Kastles Cheerleader and be a part of the most exciting World Team Tennis Organization! With an intimate stadium, music between points, cheerleaders, and mascots tall and round, the Washington Kastles offer a high-energy experience unlike any tennis tournament in the world. Washington Kastles Cheerleaders perform at 7 home games for loyal fans and cheer for our famous team members such as Serena and Venus Williams and Martina Hingis. We offer all-encompassing training and preparation to help young women be successful in the audition process. By attending Throwback Cheer Fab Fitness classes you will learn what it takes to become a Washington Kastles Cheerleader.
Application Process
You must be in attendance at the auditions on Wednesday, June 22nd at 7:30pm. There is a $20.00 registration fee to participate in auditions. If you attend any of the Throwback Cheer fab fitness classes you do not have to pay the registration fee. All applicants must fill out a registration form and waiver on the day of auditions.
Requirements
• Applicants must be at least 18 years old, on or before June 22nd, 2015.
• Washington Kastles Cheerleaders must have their own transportation.
• The 2015 Washington Kastles Cheerleaders will be required to be available for (6) six of the seven games throughout the Kastles Season and one promotional event, see the schedule below:
Mandatory Practice TBA
Tuesday, July 14th @ 6:00pm
Thursday, July 16th @ 6:00pm
Saturday, July 18th @ 4:00pm
Tuesday, July 21st @ 6:00pm
Sunday, July 26th @ 4:00pm
Monday, July 27th @ 6:00pm
Wednesday, July 29th @ 6:00pm
Audition Prep-Classes; Throwback Cheer Fab Fitness:
Throwback Cheer Fab Fitness classes are designed to give you the atmosphere of a real practice. Opening with deep stretching, blast cardio and weight training for long & lean muscles…followed by amazing routines choreographed by The Kastles Cheerleader Director, Chelsea Sparaco, and alumni NFL and NBA cheerleaders! All routines are taught count by count and then performed full out.
Dates: May 27th, June 3rd, June 8th, June 15th
Times: 7:30pm-9:00pm Location: May 27th & June 3rd at Skyline Sport and Health: 5115 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church VA
Location: June 8th & June 15th at BalletNova: 3443 Carlin Springs Rd, Falls Church, Virginia 22041
Auditions: (Closed to public)
Date: Wednesday, June 22nd (one audition routine will also be taught at the June 15th Throwback cheer class)
Time: 7:30pm
Place: BalletNova: 3443 Carlin Springs Rd, Falls Church, Virginia 22041
Attire: A crop top/sports bra (stomach must show) and dance shorts/briefs or short biker shorts. Flesh-colored pantyhose, dance tights or bare legged. Dance Sneaker, or Jazz shoes.
Appearance: Your hairstyle should be down and make-up should have colors that compliment you!
Washington Kastles Cheerleaders will be compensated for each game they cheer.
Contact KastlesCheer@gmail.com with any additional questions.
Visit www.facebook.com/WashingtonKastlesCheerleaders for more information.
A Tampa Bay Buccaneers Cheerleader
Description: Kings Vision was on hand for the 14-15 Ice Crew calendar photo shoot! Check out this profile featuring Ms. November 2014, Lindsay!
Thanks to Jennifer Wainwright Director of Cheerleading for the Charlotte Knights (a minor league affiliate of the Chicago White Sox) for sending along some photos of her squad, the Charlotte KnigtinGals.
The KnightinGals are in their third year and are heading into their 4th game of this season this weekend.
You can find more about the KnightinGals on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
Via the Broncos Cheerleaders Instragram: Please welcome Nikki, Allie, Lizzie, Jozie, and Sara!
Backstage Monday night at the Eagles Cheerleaders Finals.
Michelle, Cheryl and Jessica are all 6-year veterans looking for their 7th lucky season.
And they all made it!
By Cathy Proctor
Denver Business Journal
Many professional dancers have long needed slim, flexible, strong protective pads to protect their knees from repeated impacts on the dance floor.
Just ask a Denver Nuggets dancer.
That need has led to an innovation that, according to its inventors, could dramatically change all kinds of protective equipment, from steel-toed boots at the construction site to football helmets on the field.
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“It’s a hybrid material system, HMS, which can absorb four times more energy from impacts than any other competing product in the world,” said Terry Lowe, a research professor at Colorado School of Mines’ George S. Ansell Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering.
The patented knee pad is made of conventional foam as well as an unusual metal mesh — think steel bridge trusses crossed with a spider’s web — and a fluid that thickens upon impact, Lowe said.
And yet the pad is as soft as your cheek, flexible and thin — less than 2 millimeters in thickness, said Kady Zinke, a former professional dancer for the Nuggets who turned to Golden’s School of Mines for help inventing a pad to protect knees. She’s teamed with Lowe on the new product.
“There’s nothing else that touches it [in the protective padding world],” Lowe said.
The state last summer gave the project a $30,000 grant, via its Advanced Industries Accelerator Program, to test the concept behind the pad. Lowe says the project is close to getting another round of state funding to test whether the pad can be manufactured at one of eight potential sites in Colorado.
The two figure they’ll need a few million dollars to finish test-manufacturing runs and learn whether the pad can be manufactured profitably, but they’re not worried about coming up with that kind of money.
Lowe said he’s received calls from many potential investors, including parents whose children have been badly hurt playing sports asking if they can invest in the new pad immediately — in hopes that other children might avoid similar injuries.
The project started because Zinke and other dancers were tired of bruised, swollen knees — a routine part of a professional dancer’s life — that result from repeatedly landing on their knees on hard dance floors during practices and performances.
And the knee pads sold in sports stores or big-box stores are no help at all, Zinke said: They’re too big, too bulky, aren’t very good at absorbing the impact, and “you could barely dance in them, much less look cute.”
Zinke has her own line of dance and active wear via her company, Kadyluxe LLC, which has caught the attention of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ cheerleading squad. They asked Zinke to design new costumes for the 2014-15 football season. She also outfitted the University of Colorado Buffaloes’ dance team for the 2013-14 season.
But while the clothing line was taking off, Zinke still wanted to pursue her original vision of a protective knee pad.
So Zinke cold-called the School of Mines, and left a message for a member of Lowe’s engineering department. Her message was passed around, ultimately landing on Lowe’s desk. And he passed it off to a colleague in California.
“My first response was this is ridiculous, impossible, because they needed a designer and they wanted to be in production in a month or so,” Lowe said.
But Zinke didn’t give up.
“I was persistent and kept calling, then one day, I got a phone call back,” Zinke said.
Lowe said he’d had that “ah-hah” moment.
“I woke up one morning and said, ‘Wait, I know a way to do this.’ That was the moment of invention, figuring out that this concept would work,” Lowe said.
He’d figured out a basic problem with pads based on foams, that when they’re hit in one area the impact causes them to bulge in another area — like pushing on a balloon with a finger.
Lowe said he realized that adding a network of metal strands to the foam would allow the pad to absorb more energy and stiffen into a protective pad.
“Part of the reason they can be thin is that it doesn’t matter where you hit it, the entire pad works to absorb the energy,” he said.
“And it’s soft, as soft as your cheek if you push on it slowly. But it you push fast it stiffens,” Lowe said.
And this new pad isn’t limited to protecting dancer’s knees.
It can be used in a football helmet, making it smaller and lighter. Something as light and small as the old leather football helmets used decades ago could be as strong as modern-day helmets, Lowe said.
“We think it’s possible to create something close to your head — 2 millimeters thick — that stiffens up like the shell of the helmet, maybe even stiffer,” he said.
Then there’s steel-toed boots, and other protective padding that workers need. And sheets of cloth that can protect priceless artwork from damage during transport.
Even ski jackets could incorporate the new pad, something Lowe — who said he was nursing his sixth cracked rib from a skiing injury — wishes was already on the market.
“The manufacturing is everything,” Lowe said.
“The concept works. The question is can you manufacture it cost-effectively and can you do it cost-effectively in Colorado? We’re not going to take this offshore. We don’t want to lose control of this,” he said.
From Left to Right:
Cat – Dance
Erica – Fitness
Mandy – Beauty
Michelle – Interview Question
By Ben Swanson
DenverBroncos.com
For Romi, Sunday’s final auditions for the Denver Broncos Cheerleaders brought an end to a five-year hiatus from the team, and for others, it offered a whirlwind beginning or another year of continued devotion and excellence.
But for her, it was time to come back.
“It feels surreal. It almost feels like the first time all over again.,” she said. “I can’t believe it, I am so honored to be back. […] I’m so honored to be back with a new generation of cheerleaders.”
August—when the cheerleaders will return to Sports Authority Field at Mile High to perform at Broncos games—is far off, but the ability to make an impact on lives outside of the stadium means more to her.
“I love performing on the field but what I love the most is the face to face interaction that, as cheerleaders, we get to interact with the entire Denver Broncos community on a local and national and international level,” she added. “And it is unbelievable how many people we get to meet and how many lives we get to affect and affect us back in return.”
From New Orleans to Hong Kong to cities and towns around Colorado, Broncos cheerleaders have been globetrotters, reaching out to people at each of the levels Romi mentioned, and she’s excited to be back in that saddle again.
“It is an unbelievable honor to have the opportunity to once again represent this esteemed, esteemed organization,” Romi said. “It truly is the best organization in the NFL and to be an ambassador for this brand is beyond overwhelming and beyond an honor.”
Katie M.’s selection to the squad was a return, too, but without the extended break. Rather, she earned her second year with the cheerleaders, which she said is more difficult because “[in] Year 2, you know what you have to lose.”
So it makes a lot of sense that hearing her name called for the second time made a different feeling from the first.
“[It was] a lot more emotional this year because you want it so bad. You know that it’s your entire life and it’s your entire passion and not having it, I don’t know what I would do. So hearing my number this year was a completely different feeling.”
For Jozie, hearing her name called was simply a shock, a dream from which she thought she might awake.
“I just kept checking my number. I was like ‘Is it me? Is it me?'” she said. “It’s incredible. I’ve worked really hard and so have these 25 other women. It’s hard work and it’s all just exploding in one moment so it’s just incredible.”
While September feels like forever away at this point, the 26 women selected to the team couldn’t be more excited.
“I’ve been ready since it ended,” Katie M. said. “We all are ready. I can’t wait for the draft and I can’t wait for football to start.”
