The Phoenix Coyotes have posted a group photo and individual profiles for the members of the 2012-13 Patrol. I don’t think this group was on the website at all last year, so good job, Coyotes! Click here to check it out!
Mark Mennie and Waldy Martens Photographers shoot the Calgary Roughnecks Drill Crew’s 2013 Calendar
Calgary, CA: Internationally based photographers Mark Mennie and Waldy Martens team up for the second time in 2012, to shoot the National Lacrosse League, Calgary Roughneck’s dance team the Drill Crew’s 2013 Calendar. Their union was first conceived this past June, as they conceptualized and shot the ever-popular Calgary Stampeders cheerleading dance team, the Outriders’ 2013 Calendar. Dana Murphy, the Drill Crew’s coach, manager, choreographer, and a former Outrider herself, challenged the duo to portrait the women in a sexy manner while shooting amongst a hard industrial background. The intense four-day photo shoot, took place at Calgary’s Saddledome with the Drill Crew choosing to wear sexy lingerie and in bright bold colors. Mennie and Martens then insightfully shot the women thoughtfully laced and intertwined through contrasting rugged backgrounds, including in the ice making plant, water room, boiler room and work/repair shop. In post-production, Martens’ added his professional style that truly made the imagery pop, then the meticulous imagery was passed along to the talented designer Rheana Fehr, a former Drill Crew member as well, to produce what will no doubt be another sellout edition.
Mennie and Martens originally met as classmates in 1985 in the Photography Program at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, Alberta. Both then went on to pursue separate and diverse careers, with Martens starting up a photography studio in Vancouver BC. While shooting commercially, Martens quickly developed his unique glamour style of portraying women, which in turn did led to a scoring a prestigious American magazine as one of his main clients. Martens also worked with the CFL franchise British Columbia Lions, producing imagery for their Cheer team, the Felions’ yearly calendar. Mennie in turn went on to pursue commercial work in Calgary in the 1990’s, but took an interesting curve in his career by focusing on the documentary portrayal of air medical / med-evac services in Canada and onto the US in 2001. The same year in fact that Mennie was awarded the Outriders’ 2002 Calendar contract and challenged the dance team to pursue a more editorial “Girl Power” theme, vs the typical swimsuit theme of many other cheerleading teams in North America. This second 2013 Calendar is indeed like a dream come true for Mennie, as he has been hoping for years to collaborate with his best friend.
The Drill Crew 2013 Calendar is now available for international purchase on their dedicated website www.drillcrew.ca. The glossy 12 month gem will also be the focal point of the Calgary Roughnecks Home Opener in Calgary on Saturday, January 12th, 2013 www.calgaryroughnecks.com. The calendar is $15 or $20 for a signed copy, tax and shipping may apply. To find out more about Mennie and Martens please visit their sites www.mennie.com or www.waldymartens.com
[Click here to get a copy of the calendar]
A cheerleader who can kick butt. That's so Badass! Love her.
Fightland
January 9, 2013
This time last year, Rachel Wray was spending her Sundays on the sidelines of Arrowhead Stadium as an NFL cheerleader for the Kansas City Chiefs. She stumbled onto an MMA gym looking for a way to change up her workouts, and before long she preferred the feel of the canvas to the stadium turf. Now she’s left the NFL for the fighter’s life. Now when her lips are red at work, it’s not lipstick — it’s blood. Wray talked to us about leaving cheerleading and how she’s prepping for her upcoming fight at the Voodoo Lounge in Kansas City later this month.
Fightland: Is there any similarity between fight training and cheerleader training?
Rachel Wray: (Laughs) There is nothing similar between fight training and cheerleader training. To be a professional cheerleader you need dance practice, swimsuit modeling, football knowledge, public speaking, and to have perfect hair, nails, and makeup at all times. I always laugh when I get out of a fight practice because I always look so disgusting — drenched in sweat, no makeup, hair a huge mess. As a cheerleader if your lipstick isn’t perfect at practice, you get in trouble. They are polar-opposite worlds.
Why did you leave cheerleading to become an MMA fighter?
The reason I chose to leave cheerleading to fight was simple: I enjoyed it more. Just when I was really getting into the MMA training, Chiefs cheerleader auditions were approaching. I had to make a decision; it was impossible to do both. I knew it was right because on nights when I had cheer practice, all I could think about was that I wished I was at HD (High-Davis Mixed Martial Arts gym). Fighting made me happier than cheerleading. I enjoyed it so much more. So I made the switch.
Do you remember the first fight you saw? How did it make you want to be a fighter?
Coming from Arkansas, a place where football is the only sport that matters, I didn’t even know what cage fighting was until I moved to Kansas City. The first fight I ever watched was Ronda Rousey versus Miesha Tate. I watched it on YouTube. That fight really inspired me and I still love to watch it to this day. That fight is the ultimate example of how girls can put on an entertaining show, just like the boys. I’d never been interested in women’s sports to be honest … until I found MMA. Now I can’t get enough of girl fights.
Did you have any martial arts or fighting background prior to going MMA?
I have been a cheerleader, dancer, and gymnast my entire life. I have absolutely zero fighting background. I have been built completely from scratch by my coaches. I train four to five nights a week at HD, which includes sparring two nights a week, grappling two nights a week, along with boxing/Muay Thai pad work, wrestling, and gi jiu-jitsu. I also run several times a week to keep my cardio strong. I do private lessons with my boxing coach Melvin Wesley and jiu-jitsu lessons with my coach Travis Conley to work on technique. LC Davis and Jason High are my MMA coaches; they help me with my training as well.
Do you find it’s harder to be taken seriously as a fighter as a woman, or former cheerleader, because it’s considered such a macho sport?
I’ve never really had a problem with people not taking me seriously. In fact, being a girly cheerleader has worked surprisingly to my advantage in this sport. I have a very unique story, and people are entertained by it. I think I proved to everyone in my first fight that I am serious, and it will only get better going forward. Of course, there will always be haters, but I don’t let that get me down. Those people are just ignorant or jealous. If you don’t have haters, you aren’t doing something right.
What are your goals for your MMA career?
I want to go pro someday. I need to get a lot more experience as an amateur, but this is something I could see myself doing as a career. I can’t imagine my life without it.
Veteran Ravens cheerleader to represent team in Hawaii game
BY ALLAN VOUGHT
Baltimore Sun
January 10, 2013
If the Baltimore Ravens are fortunate to make it to the Super Bowl in New Orleans next month, the team’s cheerleader squad will be on hand to root them on to victory.
The weekend before the Super Bowl, one member of the Ravens cheerleader squad who lives in Bel Air will be traveling to Hawaii to cheer and represent her team and her fellow squad members at the Jan. 27 Pro Bowl game in Honolulu.
“This is a big honor for me to go to the Pro Bowl,” said “Angel,” short for Angelica, who has been a Ravens cheerleader for six years. (Ravens officials ask that last names not be used in stories for the security of the cheerleaders.)
Angel, who is 25, said she has been cheering since she was 4 years old, when she started in a rec program in Overlea. Originally from the Parkville area, she and her family have lived in Bel Air for a number of years.
Angel graduated from Mercy High School in Northeast Baltimore and attended Harford Community College. She works at Johns Hopkins Medical System in East Baltimore in the radiology department. Both her parents work at Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Bel Air.
For the Pro Bowl, each NFL team with a cheerleading squad selects one representative. Angel said she’s looking forward to that trip and, if the Ravens don’t make it all the way, she’ll leave Hawaii and head to Japan for a USO Armed Forces Entertainment Tour. She previously traveled overseas with the USO to the Middle East.
Cheerleading is very competitive, particularly at the NFL level. Angel, who also has served as captain of the Ravens squad for three years, said the annual tryouts typically bring out upward of 400 young women for the squad. There are 38 spots on the squad.
“It’s a big deal,” she said about making the squad, which even returning members have to try out for again.
In addition to Angel, three other Harford County women are on the current squad, and several alumni live in the area.
The cheerleading squad is at all the Ravens’ home games at M&T Bank Stadium. The women don’t travel to away games and the majority of them, like Angel, have regular jobs and other careers.
Angel admits to being something of a cheerleading lifer, having started at such a young age and working up through youth competition, cheering in high school (for teams at an all-girls school, which she concedes isn’t as much fun as cheering for the purple and black) to the ultimate in high octane cheering on the NFL stage.
She’s developed a fan base all her own, judging from some of the photos her fans have sent her, and if you are thinking of becoming one after reading this article, catch her while you can. After six years and doing a lot with the Ravens organization, Angel said she thinks this will be her last year.
All the more reason to hope the Ravens will be in Superdome on the evening of Sunday, Feb. 3.
Click here to see the photoessay in it’s entirety.
To prepare for a game, Gold Rush team captain Melissa practices several days a week on her own and meets with the squad the day before the game for a six to seven hour rehearsal. Being able to perform in front of 64,000 49er faithful is indescribable, she says. (Michelle Le / Special to the Chronicle)
Melissa joined the Gold Rush Cheerleaders three years ago and was chosen as captain in her second season. The girls on the squad look up to her both off the field and on. (Michelle Le / Special to the Chronicle)
Leading a squad of 32 girls through a 10-hour game day filled with 42 different memorized routines all performed in three inch heels, Melissa steps up to her leadership role as team captain. (Michelle Le / Special to the Chronicle)
Go Local Prov
January 8, 2013
There was no rose for Rhode Island’s Lauren Marchetti last night on ABC’s season premiere of The Bachelor. Along with 5 other contestants, the former GoLocalTV anchor and Patriots Cheerleader was eliminated from the competition.
Friends on Facebook were already rallying around Marchetti, telling her that “She could do way better than Sean,” referring to this season’s new Bachelor, Sean Lowe. Lowe himself was eliminated on a previous season of ABC’s The Bachelorette.
Watch Lauren’s interview on ABC last night where she talks about her overprotective dad, her family, and more.
Laura Spencer, Ice Crew Coordinator for the Pittsburgh Penguins gives us a peek behind the scenes and shows off those new uniforms!
NHL hockey is back, and so are the Redline Lady Panthers! Click here to learn more about the ladies on the team!
Jessica Howell, a Greenon High School graduate and a second-year Ben-Gal cheerleader for the Cincinnati Bengals, is pictured here with her mother, Jeanine Howell, at a Bengals Game. Jeanine is a retired teacher at Greenon.
Springfield News Sun
January 7, 2013
GREENON — Keeping New Year’s resolutions are on our minds this week, and I cannot help but wonder how many resolutions made it through the first seven days.
I just had a lovely conversation with an amazing Greenon graduate who made a New Year’s resolution at the end of 2010 and is still keeping it.
Jessica Howell had just relocated to Ohio from Washington, D.C., in 2010 when she and friends attended a Bengals game near the end of the season. While watching the Bengals cheerleaders — the Ben-Gals — dance, she decided that she was going to someday be a Ben-Gal.
“I completely invested myself in taking prep classes, learning how to do makeup and hair, and getting instructions from previous Ben-Gals cheerleaders,” Howell said.
Howell already had a head start on the process.
Daughter of Denny and Jeanine Howell of Enon, she had been a cheerleader since middle school. While at Greenon High School, she cheered and continued her dance training at Miami Valley Dance in Fairborn.
At Eastern Kentucky University, she was on the dance team while studying sign language. She was also president of the Delta Omicron chapter of Kappa Delta.
She took her father’s advice very seriously and even listed his quote in her profile on the Ben-Gals webpage.
“Give 100 percent in every aspect of life.”
After working as a sign interpreter in Washington, D.C., for 2 years she returned to Ohio, got her master’s degree in human resource development from Xavier. And she dedicated herself to preparations for tryouts.
Much of her spare time was spent at MuscleDawg Fitness in Miamisburg, preparing for cheer tryout and bikini/fitness competition.
The arduous tryouts for the Ben-Gals begin in the spring of each year, according to Howell. There are four rounds of cuts, including a boot camp. Howell was thrilled to make it onto the Ben-Gals roster the first year she tried out, which was a big accomplishment. She has just completed her second year as a Ben-Gal.
Becoming a Ben-Gal did not mean that her working out regimen was over. Oh no.
In addition to her job as an independent contractor and sign language interpreter, Howell attends two to three strenuous practice sessions a week and continues to workout at the fitness center with a trainer. She also explained that the exciting Bengals games in Paul Brown Stadium are like 4-hour long dance sessions. However, I imagine the time goes very quickly.
In addition to cheering at home games, Ben-Gals also volunteer and attend many charity events throughout the year. Even though she has a full calendar, she takes the time to see her parents in Enon, and both her sisters, Jennifer Priest, and Julianne Howell, who live nearby.
Last weekend when the Bengals’ played their wild card game, Howell had to watch it on a big screen like the rest of us, since the cheerleaders don’t get to go to away games.
As she explained to me, the only away game they get to cheer at is the Super Bowl. So … I asked her to call me when she gets there.
That is one column I’d love to write.
