Gold Rush Cheerleader Jackie is representing the San Francisco 49ers at the 2009 Pro Bowl. Keep up to date on all that she's been doing in her first Pro Bowl diary entry.
So far, it's a lot of work. More than I ever thought it would be.
Today, I'm like a noodle. But, I'm happy that I have two hours of free time to soak it in before we go to the luau tonight. We won't be working at the luau so that's nice. It's for the executives of the 49ers and a lot of sponsors who are here, the players – their families and of course the cheerleaders. We're just mingling, having fun and getting the party started. They're going to serve dinner and I'm pretty sure there will be live entertainment, Hawaiian dancers and things like that. It's going to be really relaxed and we get to dress up in pretty dresses. It's the big welcoming for all the cheerleaders, the players and the people who have been working on this event for the past couple of months.
I landed on Monday, but that doesn't count as a working day for us, because that's just the day of arrival. The West Coast girls got here first because we're a quick plane ride. We had some lunch and then we went back to our hotel and practiced. It was hard to practice, because every couple of minutes, someone new would come through the door. It would be a girl from the Minnesota Vikings or the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Of course, it was girl time. We all would sit around and talk and figure out how we were doing on the material. We'd talk about how nervous we'd been leading up to our arrival. Monday wasn't a real day because people were coming in all the way through midnight.
We woke up really early Tuesday morning. All of us woke up around 5 and 5:30 AM. We were had a beautiful ocean view, there was a nice breeze and it was just amazing. We have a catered breakfast every morning at 7:15. We ate for about an hour, they gave us a welcome speech and talked a lot about what the week was going to entail and how much hard work it was going to be. Even then I didn't understand how much hard work we were going to be doing and I'm sure we haven't even started with half of it.
Once we finished eating we headed over to the pool area to do our team photo cards. That's why we woke up so early. We had to come to breakfast with our hair and makeup done. We had to have our earrings, boots, nylons, pom-poms and all that good stuff ready to go. As soon as we were done eating we headed out to the pool.
Doing a photo shoot with 26 cheerleaders kind of takes more time than you would think. They organized us by hair color, height and team colors so we didn't have a whole bunch of red-uniformed cheerleaders in one section. It took a while, but once they had all the cheerleaders in place, they'd say, "Those two uniforms are too identical. We need to switch them around." It took a little over an hour before we got to posing. Once they had us set up, we started the shoot and they took take after take after take. What was really interesting about yesterday was that it was warm, but also really windy. They said it was probably one of the windiest days that they've had so far. Our hair was blowing all over the place and then it started to sprinkle for a minute. That took a little more time. We had to wait for the wind to die down so we could get that perfect shot at the perfect moment. What was cool about it was that it was done at the pool where we were staying. A lot of visitors and guests were peeking out their windows and coming out on their balconies to watch, because there were 26 women in uniforms and boots. We drew quite a large crowd by the second hour.
Apparently, one of the fans who were there, snapped a quick picture of what we were doing and leaked it on the internet within 10-15 minutes. Before I could even get back to my room, some of my teammates on the Gold Rush were emailing me the pictures from out by the pool with all the other cheerleaders. They were saying it looks amazing and I said, "We just did that a half hour ago." I've already been getting a lot of text messages and emails from friends and family who have seen it.
We finished up around 11:30 and they gave us a half hour to get out of uniforms and get a quick bite to eat, but that was when the real work started.
At 1:00 we met inside the ballroom of the hotel and we started working on our material. Before we got down to Hawaii, they sent us a DVD of the performances we had to have ready by the time we arrived. The funny part was how we had to work out the kinks and different roll-offs and counts.
They split us up into AFC and NFC and from there we voted on who our captains were going to be.
I was very fortunate because my fellow NFC cheerleaders chose me to be their captain. I'm very excited about that and I'm so excited to tell all our 49ers fans that I'm the NFC captain. That means I'll be calling out all the dances on the field and anytime we do a live performance, I'm kind of the MC. I'll introduce the other NFC cheerleaders.
We practiced yesterday from 1-5 and from 5-6 we had a dinner break. And then we practiced again from 6-10. That made for a pretty busy day all together. In addition to the photo shoot, we had eight hours of practice and every second of it required us to give 100 precent
Regardless of all of us being captains on our respective teams, we couldn't dance less than our best, but it was a really good time. All of the girls are really getting along and I feel like I have a ton of new best friends. At the end of the day, I was too tired to meet my family for dinner and too tired to return phone calls. They worked us to death, so that's why I'm so excited to have two hours of free time today.
I'll check in with you again later in the week!
- Jackie
