KPLR 11: Saluting the troops – some of the Rams cheerleaders are heading overseas to cheer on the nations finest. It’s all a part of a five day good will tour. Two members of the Rams cheerleading squad were at Lambert Airport Friday morning preparing to leave. Click here to go to the photo gallery.
KHOU.com
February 3, 2011
HOUSTON—The Dynamo Girls, presented by Pantene, will hold auditions for their 2011 squad beginning this Saturday, February 5, from 8 a.m.-4 p.m.
Auditions for the Dynamo’s official dance squad will be held at the University of Houston Wellness and Recreation Center’s multi-purpose activity court, located at 4500 University Drive.
Since 2007, the Dynamo Girls have had more than 500 girls register for their tryouts. The Dynamo Girls appeared at more than 400 different community appearances last year, held their annual Junior Dynamo Camp, and danced at every home game to add to the Dynamo game-day experience.
Leading the girls for the fifth straight season will be Marilu Amador Harman, a former dancer for the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, who directed and created the Houston Rockets Power Dancers.
“This is an amazing organization,” Amador Harman said. “Dedication to the fans and the community, as well as the commitment to providing a world-class sports program in Houston, are its top priorities. The Dynamo Girls work very hard to further those efforts, and they are not only talented individuals, but they care about their team, their organization, and their fans.”
Media are invited to attend the tryouts from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday. More details are available at www.HoustonDynamo.com/dynamogirls.
The Oklahoma City Thunder website has finally been updated with individual profiles of the Thunder Girls. Click here to learn lots more about the dancers on the team!
Bonnie, Marisa, and Shonna
Eric Zarate
Star-Telegram
02/03/2011
Nolan Ryan was in the Super Bowl Media Center on Thursday, but the biggest draw was a morning appearance by two Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders at the North Texas Host Committee booth.
Carey DePasquale (left in picture) and Brooke Sorenson autographed squad photos and posed for dozens of photos.
“This has been good,” DePasquale said.
She said people have asked about the lack of cheerleaders at the game. Neither the Packers nor the Steelers have professional cheerleading squads.
“They’ve tried to get us in the game,” she said, referring to the Cowboys. “But the NFL just won’t let us. They’ve covered up every star, every Dallas Cowboys logo. We’ll be performing outside before the game.”
The visit was arranged by the Arlington Convention and Visitors Bureau, which took its turn in the booth after Fort Worth, Dallas and Grapevine had theirs on Wednesday.
“I think we’re rocking the joint,” said Diane Brandon, vice president of marketing and public relations, who also helped CNN land a visit by the cheerleaders.
For the record, Fort Worth brought along Ryan, author Dan Jenkins and celebrity chef Tim Love; Dallas gave away iPads; and Grapevine featured a miniature Cowboys Stadium built out of Legos.
But only Arlington, home of Cowboys Stadium, could bring along a pair of cheerleaders.
by Lynn Hoppes
ESPN.com
Feb 3, 2011
Richie Sambora, getting ready to board a plane from Los Angeles to the Super Bowl city of Dallas, wanted to talk football.
“Who is going to win the Super Bowl?” he asked.
“Aaron Rodgers vs. Ben Roethlisberger is going to be a great battle,” he answered himself.
“Who has the experience to win?” he said rhetorically.
Sambora, the lead guitarist of legendary rock band Bon Jovi, was so excited to head to Dallas on Thursday night to be part of the spectacle of Super Bowl weekend.
And he’s really looking forward to Friday afternoon when he and his partner Nikki Lund have their clothing line — WTB (White Trash Beautiful) — modeled by the Dallas Cowboys’ cheerleaders.
“Of course, I’m extremely proud,” said Sambora, who started the line in spring 2010. “You will have gorgeous girls wearing our fashion. These girls are going to be showing the clothes like art. It’s going to be wonderful.”
WTB is anything but white trash. It’s a contemporary fashion line consisting of distressed leather separates, dresses, evening gowns and more. The WTB Collection already has found celebrity fans including Carrie Underwood, Miley Cyrus and Kellie Pickler. A men’s line will debut this spring.
What’s with the title of White Trash Beautiful?
“I was walking around my house with this title in my head and I couldn’t figure out what to do with it,” Sambora said, “so I thought ‘women’s fashion line’. I met this brilliant woman named Nikki and we took it from there.”
Lund, who already has a clothing line called Eccentric Symphony, said when Sambora came calling, she wasn’t going to say no.
“He is a humble and amazing man, and it really was quite easy for me to say ‘Yeah, let’s do it,'” she said. “We’re knowledgeable together on a lot of things and he’s taught me a lot about football. He explained what a first down was!”
Back to the Super Bowl, Sambora continued the conversation:
“It’s going to be a great game. I can’t wait to see the stadium,” he said. “Some of the players are my friends. It’s going to be a wonderful weekend.”
GateHouse News Service
Feb 02, 2011
Westford native and New England Patriots cheerleader Patricia Fox returned late last month from a two-week tour overseas to visit deployed U.S. troops.
“With the Patriots cheerleaders, I was given the opportunity to go oversees to visit the troops, which is an experience I will never forget,” said Fox.
Six Patriots cheerleaders and their coach, Tracy Sormanti, began their tour on December 20 in Kyrgyzstan and then arrived in Northern Afghanistan on Christmas Day. They ended the tour in Qatar celebrating the New Year with troops, having visited 12 forward-operating bases and command outposts – some with as many as 3,000 troops and others with as few as a dozen. The squad traveled via Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters, C-130 and C-17 airplanes. They performed 10 full shows, ate all of their meals with the troops, signed autographs, did photo sessions, and participated in several re-enlistments ceremonies.
Fox is a 2010 graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she earned a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering. She is now an environmental engineer with a consulting firm, working with municipalities throughout New England to help improve water sources and distribution systems.
Fox, who lives in Westford, is also a dance instructor, striving to teach young children, “good morals and life goals,” she said. Her parents John and Sarah Fox also live in town.
Her career goals are rooted in a desire to continue helping others, she added.
“Wherever life takes me, I hope to be helping one way or another,” Fox said. “No matter where I end up in the future, my goal is to always be helping, either at work or in my community.”
By Brett Hart
Dunn County News
February 2, 2011
Just six teams in the National Football League compete each week without the support of professional cheerleaders. Two of those teams — the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers — will be facing off Sunday in Super Bowl XLV. Ironically, the league’s most anticipated and most prestigious game will take place at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, home of the most recognized NFL professional cheerleading squad.
Sunday’s showdown will be the first time in the Super Bowl’s 45 years that no cheerleaders will be taking to the sidelines. One of those cheerleaders not making the trip is 2010 Colfax High graduate Heather Smith, whose UW-Green Bay cheer squad doubles as the Packers’ official cheerleaders, although they are not employed by the team.
Thankful, honored
“That’s perfectly fine with us,” said Smith after being asked how she felt about being excluded from the nation’s biggest sporting event. “We have had the opportunity to cheer for them at every home game, and no matter where we are or what were are doing, we will continue to support the ‘Pack.’ We are very fortunate, being a college cheer team, to have the opportunity to cheer for an NFL team, and for that, I am so thankful and honored. I know that the Packers will go out and fight to bring the Super Bowl title back to Titletown USA!”
The last time the two teams met was Dec. 20, 2009, in Pittsburgh, game that ended in a 37-36 victory for the defending Super Bowl champion Steelers on a Ben Roethlisberger touchdown pass to Mike Wallace as time expired. For many, the expectations are for a similar game this time between two of the league’s most accomplished teams.
This is the Steelers’ eighth trip to Super Bowl, winning six of their first seven appearances. Green Bay was in the first two Super Bowls ever and are 3-for-4 in the title games race.
Beyond imagination
Smith has found her inaugural season as a collegiate cheerleader to be an eventful learning experience.
“I have learned to be more confident in myself,” said Smith. “When you’re out there in front of thousands of people, you really have to trust yourself and be confident that you will succeed… I’m doing stuff in college cheerleading that I never would have pictured myself ever doing.
“Believe it or not, cheer has taught me how to manage my time more wisely,” Smith noted. “Cheerleading in college is huge responsibility, and it is up to you to balance homework, classes, work, a social life and cheerleading. That can be rather complicating, but in the end, it makes you grow as a person.”
She added, “I have learned to have a great deal more respect for cheerleaders everywhere. The amount of time, we put into what we do is ridiculous, but so worth it in the end.”
So, although she won’t be joining her second team in Texas, Smith said, “I am still in love with cheerleading… Cheering for the Packers this year has been amazing. I never imagined when I made the squad this past year that the Packers would make it all the way and that just made it 10 times more exciting.
“The Packers are an amazing team and deserve their place at the Super Bowl,” Smith continued. “Now I’m proud to say that in the future, I can be like, ‘Yeah, I cheered for the Packers the year they went to Super Bowl 45!”
By Heather Svokos
DFW.com
Tuesday, Feb. 01, 2011
Here we are, in the homeland of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, about to wage a Super Bowl battle … without the aid of cheerleaders.
Seems like some kind of cruel, cosmic joke, right?
But the Packers and the Steelers are among six of the NFL’s 32 teams that don’t have official cheerleaders. (The others: the Chicago Bears, Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions and New York Giants. For the record, the Packers do have a non-pro cheer squad, courtesy of St. Norbert College and University of Wisconsin-Green Bay — but they’re not generally invited to road games, and they weren’t invited to this year’s Super Bowl.)
As a native Pittsburgher, this revelation got me to thinking: Why no cheerleaders?
I dismissed the cold-weather-state rationale once I learned that the Minnesota Vikings have cheerleaders. (Brrrr, ladies!)
So, is it because the city of my birth is some hidden bastion of feminism? (Sorry, I fell off my chair laughing.)
More likely is the blue-collar factor: A fancy city like Dallas may have embraced the razzle-dazzle, but towns like Pittsburgh, Green Bay and Milwaukee have a no-nonsense reputation. It’s all about the ugly, bone-crunching football. My friend and fellow ‘Burgher Leslie Rubinkowski validated my theory: “It’s the yinzer ethic — the cheering happens after you win the game. Before that, you kick ass.”
(For you non-Terrible Towel-wavers: “Yinzer” is a nickname for someone from Pittsburgh, derived from our regional colloquialism “yinz.” As in: “Yinz ready to order?” It’s like “y’all,” minus the charm.)
But I still wanted to find out a little more, and my mission for answers took me on a little history quest — directly to a woman named Dianne Feazell Rossini, who was, in fact, a cheerleader for the Steelers in 1963. So they did once have a squad, aptly namely the Steelerettes. Rossini now lives and works in Uniontown, Pa. — the town where I grew up — and runs a website dedicated to the story of the Steelerettes (www.steelerettes.com).
As I plumbed for insights from her, we struck up a delightful correspondence.
We’re used to today’s pro sports cheerleaders — Cowboys Cheerleaders, Laker Girls — being industries and brands unto themselves, but back in the early ’60s, when the Steelerettes first formed, they were recruited from nearby schools. The Steelerettes came from Robert Morris Junior College. A look at Rossini’s website shows that the first squad, in 1961, wore hard hats and gold suspendered jumpers with skirts that hit below the knee.
Not exactly va-va-va-voom attire. But at the time, the notion of cheerleaders was revolutionary — and so not welcome by the team’s conservative owner, Art Rooney, known as “the Chief.”
“According to the Chief, women didn’t belong on a football field — period!” Rossini told me.
The demise of the Steelerettes came in 1969, when the squad’s captain approached Rooney and asked if they could update their outmoded look. His response was to have them fired, according to a 2007 story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
“The older I get, the more I agree with the Chief,” Rossini says. “For a long time I wished the Steelerettes had continued on to the glory days of the ’70s. How exciting that would have been. My thoughts now are that most people pay to see a football game — not ogle a bunch of girls. I don’t think they really add anything to the game, except maybe provide something to watch when your team is losing badly.”
That said, she’s part of a sorority, and she has warm feelings about her sisters from then and now.
“By the time the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were born [in 1972], times had changed and their uniforms were no longer considered shocking,” she notes. “We had to beg, cry and cajole to get the front office to allow our skirts to be above our knees. Two totally different eras. I am very proud to have been a Steelerette, and we all agree it’s kind of nice to belong to this exclusive club. We are all there was and all there will ever be.”
Rossini thinks as long as the Rooney family has the reins, the Steelers will stay cheerleaderless. She paraphrased Art Rooney’s son Dan: “The Steelers have the best and most football-savvy fans in the world, and they don’t need anyone telling them when to cheer.”
Sure, you could argue that cheerleaders enhance a franchise and boost a city’s commerce — and you’d be right. But at this moment in American history, when life is still rocky for so many, it’s a tribute to the scrappy places like Pittsburgh and Green Bay when a tough-minded, no-frills approach can produce a real winner.
Another silver lining in this cheerleaderless Super Bowl: It led me to discover a dusty but lovely piece in the patchwork of my hometown heritage. And though I haven’t been an ardent football fan for decades, Dianne Rossini’s tale stirred my latent Steeler pride.
Are yinz ready for some football?
