Edmonton Eskimos
Kassidy’s Blog – Eskimo Cheer Team
I am so honored to be representing the EE cheer team for my third season and I feel blessed to have the opportunity to perform with the members of this wonderful team. Even though it is my third time going through everything, I have to admit that it is still very exciting for me.
On June 28th I had my photo shoot for the Eskimo Cheer Team’s annual calendar. It is always something we look forward to; we have been planning and preparing for this since our workshop weekend in May. This year I will be sharing a month with Katrina. After some thought and collaboration with our special events coordinator, Karen, Katrina and I decided to wear a black bathing suit with gold accessories. We arrived at Artistic Creations early on the evening of our photo shoot to quickly touch up our hair and makeup before the photo shoot got underway. Once ready, we followed our photographer, Bill Meachem, down to Rainbow Valley which is just off the Whitemud Freeway. There are some beautiful locations down by the water there, so I knew we would have a gorgeous backdrop and I couldn’t wait to see what artistic arrangements Bill would make for our pictures.
Bill always does a fantastic job of giving us flattering and fun poses; he notices even the tiniest details which make our pictures perfect. I always have so much fun working with him and I have to laugh at the fact that he knows all of our secrets, the good, the bad and the ugly!
As we were posing for Bill, people would stroll by and watch us for a while. We felt a little bit like minor celebrities as we posed and tried to show our best sides for the camera. Bill is a perfectionist so he made us wait until the light, which was natural light, was perfect for the type of shots he was aiming for. He took a variety of shots as we posed in various ways. For the vets, Bill already knows what we like or don’t like and he will make certain all of the shots he takes flatter us. He always makes us look like the absolute best version of ourselves, so we are excited to see his end product.
Since this year’s Grey Cup is a huge milestone for the CFL, the Cheer Team is incorporating the Eskimo marketing campaign into our calendar for the first time ever, so we could really show fans out east how proud we are to be “green and gold to the core”. We are so excited to release our 2013 calendars to you first, Eskimo fans, this Friday at the Labour Day Rematch. Our brand new calendars (and our playing cards) will be available for the remainder of the season for purchase by any cheerleader at a home game or a promotion in the community or in the Eskimo Fan Shop. All proceeds go to sending us to Grey Cup. We can’t wait to see you all on Friday cheering the boys on to a W! GO ESKS GO!
– Kassidy