Sans Souci Dancer Almost a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader

(Sans Souci is in New South Wales, Australia – james)

From The Leader

Sans Souci dancer Bianca Argyros, 22, made the recent semi-finals of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleader auditions.

Argyros traveled to Dallas, Texas, last month to try out for her dream job against 400 other hopefuls. She was chosen among the top 100 dancers but missed the final 40.

“Making it to the semi-finals for the world’s best team is a huge achievement for me and I’m so proud of myself for pursuing that dream,” she said.

“I will continue to audition for the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and I hope to make the dream team one day.”

She cheers for St George Illawarra Dragons in the NRL rugby league competition and is a former cheerleader for Canterbury Bulldogs.

Argyros, who had studied at the Broadway Dance Centre in New York in 2011, wants to dance professionally in the US.

Cheer Feature from Down Under

Flames cheerleaders out to bust ‘dumb blonde’ myth
By ANGELA THOMPSON
Illawarra Mercury
May 16, 2013, 10 p.m.

NRL cheerleader Jessica Gallimore loves the roar of the crowd and being on the field when the atmosphere lifts at big games.

Less endearing, though, are the comments. She gets them at every game, shouted from the sidelines or from cars driving past the stadium.

“[Comments] range from ‘you look good’ to things I can’t repeat,” said 23-year-old Miss Gallimore, who has cheered with Wests Tigers and, now, with the St George Illawarra Flames.

“There’s always some young, drunk guy yelling out … things like wanting to take you home and what they would do to you. I wouldn’t say it’s flattering at all to be spoken to like that.

“I’m always really self-conscious about what people there with families are thinking.

“[Those making the comments] wouldn’t objectify their own mother or daughter or sister. Don’t treat us any different to how you treat them.”

Miss Gallimore and fellow Flames member Stephanie Buncombe are part of a push to debunk the “cheerleader myth” on the eve of the NRL’s Women in League round this weekend.

According to Miss Gallimore the myth – which casts cheerleaders as “girls that just dance [with] blonde hair, big boobs” – is outdated, if it were ever true.

She points to the occupations of Flames members and her own academic achievements – a double degree in Dance and PDHPE from the Australian College of Physical Education and, in progress, a bachelor of social science in criminology and criminal justice at the University of Western Sydney – as proof that the stereotype is undeserved.

Cheerleaders join cast of Aussie “Amazing Race”

We’re not bimbos’ say twins Michelle and Jo as they start their own Amazing Race
Debbie Schipp
The Sunday Telegraph (Australia)
May 27, 2012

THEY’RE a reality television talent scout’s dream team.

White-blonde Barbie beach-girl lookalikes, twin sisters, cheerleaders who love to be the centre of attention.

They love fake tan and dressing up, and shrug off barbs about their looks.

But as they embark on the second series of Amazing Race Australia, contestants Michelle and Jo Troy happily warn you underestimate them at your peril.

The 26-year-old twins from Sydney’s Northern Beaches are NRL cheerleaders as part of the St George Illawarra Dragons’ Flames squad.

They also work for Jetstar as ground crew in Sydney.

And in more than six years of cheerleading and working as promotional models, they’ve heard all the jibes before.

“People will assume a lot of things about us because of how we look,” says Michelle, the older twin by 34 seconds.

“We are cheerleaders, we’ve heard the Barbie doll and bimbo barbs.

“We are judged for what we are on the outside. We’re not bimbos. We’re smart enough to use it to our advantage.

“We have done modelling and promo work for years, so we have developed thick skins.”

The pair leapt at the chance to join Amazing Race after the first Australian version of the show aired last year. It was a ratings success for Channel Seven, with an average of 1.2 million viewers tuning in each week to follow the fortunes of 11 duos as they criss-crossed the world using their wits and their wiles for a shot at the $250,000 to the winner.

This year’s race sees the contestants cross four continents and 65,000 kilometres, and the pace is relentless.

The twins’ opposition includes Tweed Heads indigenous cousins Adam and Dane, Melbourne couple James and Sarah (she has a penchant for cosmetic surgery and high heels – and customised a pair of runners with heels to take into the race), Melbourne policeman duo Shane and Andrew, and Tasmanian flatmates Sticky and Sam (Sticky was born without a left forearm, but has never let that stop him being an action-man)

Amazing Race host Grant Bowler warns there “is lots of big hair” this season.

What Michelle and Jo’s fellow racers might not know is that the girls went to great lengths to prepare for the race – and not just at the hairdresser.

“I think everyone sees us at the start line and says “oh my God, what are these two fluoro-pink topped-wearing blonde things doing? We’re going to walk all over them’,” Michelle says.

“We definitely go in to prove them wrong, and surprise them.”

To prepare for the race, the super-fit twins donned back-packs stacked with phone books to run stairs on the Northern Beaches, and topped it off with a few weeks with a personal trainer.

Having learned Japanese at school, and knowing the value of knowing at least a few words of other languages through their work with weary plane travellers at Jetstar, they added a basic smattering of Spanish and French to their tools for battle – “just in case we needed it”.

Three months several years ago as part of an Australian cheerleading squad in India on the lucrative IPL (Indian Premier League) cricket tour had given them a smattering of Indian language, an awareness of the extremes of poverty and excess, and opened their eyes anew to travel abroad.

The pair then refreshed their knowledge of geography, used flash-cards to learn the flags of the world, made sure they could drive manual transmission cars.

“I didn’t learn to ride a motorbike. Maybe I should have,” Michelle says.

The preparation paid off from the outset – the pair delighting at the response of fellow-racers if they overtook them at any stage in the very first challenge.

“We are very competitive on the show, but we are friendly. We will help other teams, but at the end of the day we just want to get through to the next leg,” she says.

“We surprise teams if we overtake them because the reaction is pretty much “oh my God, it’s the twins beating us? Oh my God.”

“Basically, we’re double trouble.

“Yes, we love getting our hair done and putting our make-up on. What girl doesn’t?

“We’re also know we can use the assumptions people make about us to our advantage.”


Cheering for the Australia’s National Rugby League

Cheerleaders ‘Living the Dream’
The Sydney Morning Herald
October 6, 2011

Cheerleading may evoke an image of bimbos and football groupies, but often beneath the cleavages and fake tans are smart, talented girls who just want to have fun.

Kymberley Roebuck
Just ask last year’s Big League NRL Cheerleader of the Year, Kymberley Roebuck.

She knows people see her as a busty, blonde beauty, but Roebuck rankles at the stereotype.

“That’s what someone would think if they looked at me,” says Roebuck, 23, who is now coaching the Wests Tigers C91.3 cheerleader squad. “But they don’t know I go to uni, I have a full-time job and I run a business.” (And she donated her $2000 prize money to a terminally-ill six-year-old boy, Lleyton Giles.)

Elizabeth Commons, 27, Australia’s silver medallist at this year’s world cheerleading competition, sympathises.

“People expect a certain type of person, but I’m a chemistry teacher and I’m on a team with doctors, lawyers and bankers – but we’re also cheerleaders,” Commons says.

As Roebuck says: “Basically, at the end of the day, we have a job to do.”

And both girls have worked hard to get there.

Squad members have mostly trained as dancers or have a competitive gymnastics or acrobatics background.

Other than being selected for their appearance and skills, it’s ultimately their personality that helps them stand out from the hundred or so who try out at the exhaustive annual auditions held by each football club.

A squad, usually made up of about 24 girls ranging from 16 to 27 years old, is required to do at least one rehearsal session per week during the football season. There are sponsorship appearances and on match day, cheerleaders arrive three hours before the game to hand out flyers to fans.

Although the clubs are reluctant to divulge what they pay their dancers, it’s understood to be up to about $150 for the day.

“You’re definitely not doing it for the money. You have to have a love for the game,” says Roebuck, who admits she is a huge fan of the Wests Tigers.

Shaking pom-poms and doing dance routines throughout the game, cheerleader squads add an element of excitment to the game, especially when the players first run onto the field.

And it’s a sport that’s growing in Australia.

Under the guidance of Roebuck, the Tigers have introduced two new squads of girls aged between four and 17, the Tiny Tigers Club and Pre-Squad, which performed during games this season.

“I’m trying to come in and change the stereotype by building up from a young age a group of girls that want to do this when they’re older,” she says.

Two other Aussie girls who have helped the image of cheerleaders are former Newcastle Knights cheerleader Jennifer Hawkins, who went on to become Miss Universe, and more recently, former Manly cheerleader Angela Nicotera, who was this year picked for the prestigious Dallas Cowboys cheerleading squad.

Inspired by Hawkins’ business success, Roebuck has opened a dance school specialising in cheerleading in Blacktown with two more planned for Campbelltown and Leichhardt.

As Commons explains, competitive cheerleading is different from the NRL club squads. The focus is more on acrobatic tumbling, such as backflips and stunting.

“I don’t really follow football,” says Commons, international competitor and coach of four cheerleading teams.

“It’s just a different take on it … we’re cheering as a sport, rather than for another sporting team.”

After competing at state and national level championships for more than five years, Commons was selected for an all-girl 24-member Australian team to compete at the ICU (International Cheerleading Union) World Championships last April in Orlando, Florida.

Winning Australia’s first-ever medals, Commons’ team won silver and an Australian co-ed team won bronze.

“The crowd was amazing, like nothing I’d ever experienced before,” Commons says.

Whether it’s a sport or a spectacle, cheerleading is athletic and requires training and discipline – but there’s an element of glamour too.

As Roebuck says, when the Wests Tigers cheerleaders perform at the Sydney Football Stadium with flashing lights, flames and fireworks in front of 50,000 screaming fans, pumped to Guns ‘N Roses’ Welcome to the Jungle, “you think this is surreal”.

“It’s something I can tell my daughter about when I’m a mum. I’m living the dream.”

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life/cheerleaders-living-the-dream-20111006-1lawh.html#ixzz1a0zBYzEV