Fajala and Brittany
April 30, 2012
Two four-year members of the Florida Atlantic dance team, Fajala O’dneal and Brittany Murray, have made the Miami Dolphins’ cheerleading squad.
O’dneal, a native of Orlando, was captain of last year’s team. Murray is from Boynton Beach and was a co-captain. Both majored in elementary education at FAU, with Murray part of this spring’s graduating class, and O’dneal on track to graduate this summer.
The Dolphins’ squad has an official website at www.miamidolphinscheerleaders.net. The first home game of the 2012 season will take place Week 2, September 16, against the Oakland Raiders, as the team opens the year on the road the week prior against the Houston Texans.
Back in February, I posted an article about 55 year old grandmother Sharon Simmons and her plans to audition for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Well, today was the big day and the Dallas News has photos. No word yet on whether she has survived the cuts so far.
Sharon hugs Sydney Galier before the auditions.
Sharon makes a last minute adjustment on her make up before she auditions.
Sharon watches her fellow competitors perform as she waits her turn.
Sharon waits for her group to be called during auditions for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
Sharon introduces herself to the judges.
Sharon’s audition.
Sharon said she forgot her routine and made it up on the spot during the free-style part of the auditions.
Cheers to 2012
Jay Adams
AtlantaFalcons.com
May 3, 2012
The 2012 Atlanta Falcons Cheerleaders team was named during final auditions at the Arthur M. Blank Family Office in Atlanta on Thursday night.
The final 40 ladies were reduced down from 65 finalists, who were decided from more than 270 that auditions during preliminaries Sunday.
All the veterans who auditioned made the 2012 squad, which left 18 rookies to be added to the team.
Click here to see a photo gallery from Thursday’s final auditions
“I think we have a beautiful, talented, amazing team. There was a lot of talent in all the girls I saw,” three-year veteran Alicia D. said shortly after being named back to the team. “I was impressed. … I know that we have a stellar team.”
The 2012 team will get together in a few weeks for their annual team-building retreat, and AtlantaFalcons.com will be there to introduce you to the new members.
For now, here are the 2012 Atlanta Falcons Cheerleaders (click the image below to see a larger version):
Names from left to right:
Front Row: Zorah B., Kelly P., Natalie B., Denita C., Natalie D., Sabrina C., Shauna K., Brittiney W., Emily B.
Row 2: Kelsi S., Alice F., Kristy B., Lindsay M., Melissa Z., Erin P., Kadija J., Natalie S., Amber B.
Row 3: Emily B., Inina K., Dana L., Loren C., Amber G., Cecelia B., Kristen J., Tiffany M., Haley D., Rie S., Ashley Y.
Back Row: Alicia D., Avis H., Cameron A., Kat M., Katie V., Jonna B., Kiley B., Erin G., Ariel A., Heather K., Sydney H.
Today we have the last batch of photos from this year’s Charger Girls final audition. Letters L through T.
As I look back through all of the photos, I find it a bit of a bummer that though I’ve got zillions of photos of some girls, there are others who only have one or two. I console myself with the fact that it’s not for lack of trying. All told, I came away from this year’s auditions with about 6,000 photos. I’ve shared maybe 10% of that with you. The ones that I didn’t share – well, chalk that up to the reality of action photography. Half of them are blurry. In the other half, the girl is looking the wrong way or her hair is covering her face. Or she’s cross eyed. Or blinking. Or sticking her tongue out.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I freely admit that I do tend to take more photos of the people I know. That’s not exactly on purpose. It’s just that the ones I know might clobber me if I post bad photos of them on the internet and so I take a little more care with them. So there’s a tip for next year’s tryouts. If you want to be in the photos, come find me. If not, avoid me like the plague.)
In any case, I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek behind the closed doors at Charger Girls auditions. I’ve enjoyed sharing with you. And now, on to the photos. As with the others, I’ve posted a few here, and the rest have been added to the existing gallery on flickr. [click here]
May the Fourth be with you. Ha ha ha.
Lauren
Lauren O.
*made the team*
Lauren P.
*made the team*
Maria
Marissa
*made the team*
Meredith
*made the team*
Michelle T.
Michelle W.
Mika
Natalie
*made the team*
Nicole
*made the team*
Nikki
Paige
*made the team*
Rachel J.
Rachel S.
*made the team*
Shannon
Starkesha
*made the team*
Stephanie
Tawnie
*made the team*
Taylor
Trisha
Okay I am the first to admit that this is only tangentially related to the subject of this blog. But I had to share. Sorry fellas, but I’m going girly for a minute.
Ladies, when you leave the game, you don’t have to stuff all of your team spirit in that rolly bag. Imagine strutting out out of the dressing room in a pair of THESE from HerStar.com. Woohoo!
(Insert standard disclaimer: I don’t know these people, have never seen these shoes, have no idea whatsoever if this is legit, etc. Personally, I think they’d make a real killing if they did team Uggs instead…)
Welcome back, ladies and gents. Today I give you dancers with first names B thru K. Photos for these dancers have been added to my “2012 Charger Girl Finals” gallery on flickr. Click here to go there now.
Bianca
Brianna
Caitlyn
Chelsea
Christina
Clarisse
*made the team*
Courtney
*made the team*
Diana
Erica
Erin
*made the team*
Hillary
Hope
*made the team*
Jacqueline
Jenna
Jonica
Kaley? Kaleigh? Caley? Kaylee?
Kara
*made the team*
Katelyn
*made the team*
Katie
*made the team*
Kayla
*made the team*
Kristen
Kylie
*made the team*
Tomorrow: The rest of the alphabet
by Amy Tennery
TheJaneDough.com
May 1, 2012
With May beginning, football might not be the first thing on your mind. But for hundreds of women across the country, it is. Because just as the draft has wound down a new recruiting wave is underway: The NFL cheerleader tryouts.
Chances are some of you are rolling your eyes right now, I’m sure. But while we can debate the value of NFL cheerleaders from a cultural standpoint for hours, there is one undeniable truth about these women: They are, perhaps, the least utilized financial tool in the NFL’s arsenal.
For the sake of simplicity, I’ll use the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders to lay out my case. Given the Dallas squad’s vaunted status in the cheer world, there’s a greater volume of financial information available on them — and it paints a rather bleak picture.
Put bluntly, getting onto the Dallas Cowboys cheer team is a financial investment on a par with beauty pageantry. And anyone who doesn’t grasp the severity of the analogy has clearly never seen Toddlers and Tiaras.
For instance, if you wanted to get on the DCC team, you’d probably want to purchase some official DCC Prep Classes, which will cost you about $39 a pop. The finalist workshop, meanwhile, (which is extended to final auditions contestants only), will cost you $75. You might also want to look into getting that “Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader” look. The squad’s guidelines suggest you head over to Premier Atelier and get an appointment for “a DCC consultation.” That’s right — it’s a specific hair salon, your ferry across the river Styx, if you will. Then there’s also your $25 “non-refundable processing fee.” And this isn’t counting all the other expenditures that come with the cheerleading life (see image below from the DCC website), including tans, teeth maintenance, makeup, and regular yoga and bootcamp workouts.
That’s a lot of physical maintenance. At least to some of us. A story in TBD last year recalled a Washington Redskins seminar, which instructed would-be cheerers not to “have a nervous breakdown” after they listed out their cosmetic self-improvement suggestions.
For all this, what can our hypothetical DCC member expect in return? Well, for starters, she doesn’t get paid a full-time salary. She gets around $50 for each home game. Seriously. And DCC members are not compensated for rehearsals, or workouts. And this is pretty much the industry standard. Most NFL cheerleaders pull in between $50 and $75 per game, according to Conducive Chronicle. WIth just eight regular season home games (and hey, it’s the Cowboys we’re talking about here, so regular season’s about all you’re getting, if you know what I mean… ) they’re not even coming close to hitting the one-grand mark for game-time performances. For the whole season.
Of course, there are the outside appearances, calendar pictorials, and so on. And for those, the DCC members get supplemental income. Even so, one AskMen report pegged the Dallas Cowboys’ expenditure on the cheerleaders somewhere roughly between $200 and $1,000 per month, per cheerleader. Now if this is just a hobby for you (a hobby that requires a tremendous time commitment) the payout is less of a big deal. Still, this is about fairness — and that salary is phenomenally low, especially when you consider how much the DCC brings in for its franchise.
Yes, estimating a cheerleader’s financial worth is a tricky business. And the six teams that don’t have cheerleaders haven’t crumbled out of existence (unless you’re counting the Cleveland Browns — hi-yo!). But cheerleaders add value. They put in an insane number of charity appearances, which makes their respective franchises look good. The Minnesota Vikings, for example, require their cheerleaders to make a minimum of two charity appearances a month. Then there’s the merchandise, the pep, the cheers, and the ra-ra that they bring to the table. (Unfortunately only one of these is quantifiable — but still!)
Which brings us back to the DCC ladies. So we’ve established that they each cost between $200 and $1,000 a month (we’ll just average it out to $600 to make it easier). And that’s for a (roughly) four-ish-month-long season. And there are 35 cheerleaders on the Dallas Cowboys squad. That’s $84,000 that the Cowboys are paying. For the whole squad. (By the way, the DCC also has its own sponsors, including TIGI Bed Head, so it’s probably not costing the franchise squat.)
Compare that to the tangible financial returns the franchise gets from its cheer squad: According to some estimates, the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders pull in $1 million a year. Sure, for a massive financial success like the Cowboys, that’s not that big of a deal — but cost-reward ratio here is astonishing. This is a virtually no-cost outfit that’s worth a million bucks.
Can you imagine how much they could earn for their team if someone actually invested in them? Give these women actual salaries, full-time status — make being a cheerleader a viable career, rather than asking them to run ragged between that and some other full-time gig they’d rather not be doing. They’re worth it — and so is the payoff.
Click here to check out the photo gallery on NewYorkJets.com.
If someone asked me if including a blow up doll in her talent routine was a good idea, I think I’d say “no.” But I’d like to see some video. I bet this was interesting.
Pretty!
I saw this same idea on an episode of “Toddlers and Tiaras,” but this chick did it way better.
I don’t know how I feel about this whole “veterans dressing alike at auditions” thing. On the one hand, good for the vets. It’s got to be very empowering and confidence-boosting to walk in like that. (Although, once they’ve identified themselves openly as veterans, the judges will expect much more of them, so their audition had better be flawless.) On the other hand, all those girls in matching outfits…that’s majorly intimidating for all the girls who aren’t “in the club” so to speak. It’s a little “in your face.”
See what I mean?
I hope The Line Up gave them a group discount on those outfits!
