Monday, November 14, 2011

The Monster Mash



Hey Broncos Country, Sam here. I can’t believe that it’s already November! I’m sure many of you have already ripped through your bags of Halloween candy and eaten up all the good stuff. Soon after the tummy aches and sugar highs subside, it seems that Thanksgiving is right around the corner. But before moving on to turkey and stuffing, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie (have I made your mouth water yet?), I want to back up a step and let you all in on some great haunted tales of the creepiest, craziest, and funniest Halloween—JDBC style.

As a reminder, JDBC stands for Junior Denver Broncos Cheerleaders. This year marks my first year as a JDBC instructor. JDBC is a dance and cheerleading program for girls ages 6-14. About once or twice a month, the Denver Broncos Cheerleaders get together with the JDBC girls for a clinic where we all learn dance routines, practice good teamwork and have a lot of fun!!

This year, we held our annual JDBC Halloween clinic on October 29. Every DBC that is an instructor dressed up in costume. From Cat in the Hat to Tinkerbelle to Michael Jackson, there were creative costumes chosen by each DBC. Some funny two-person costumes included Thing 1 and Thing 2 and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. I dressed up as Wenda, a character from the Where’s Waldo? book series. It was fun seeing each other dressed up, but the kids definitely stole the spotlight with their creativity.



Since I am an instructor for the 6-to 8-year-old group, I’ll tell you about the fun games we played. Well, we most certainly had a costume contest! A few JDBC girls were chosen from each of the seven squads to take the stage and show off their most creative costumes for the chance to win a special prize. All of the contestants looked fabulous—whether they were cute, creepy, scary, or enchanting—but ultimately the winners had to be selected. Our most creative costume awards went to six JDBC girls that had dressed up as Medusa, the Candy Fairy, Mulan, Cotton Candy, the Deranged Cheerleader, and last but not least, the Duckbilled Platypus. Extra kudos to the girls that made their costumes from scratch!

The game that I think the JDBC girls most enjoyed was up next. This game, unofficially named “Mummify your DBC Cheerleader”, was, well, what I’m sure most teenage boys would prefer to do to an unsuspecting house. Each squad was given two rolls of toilet paper to wrap and drape and stick to their DBC instructor in any way they could to best mummify her before the music stopped. I remember it was a dizzying whirl of TP frantically being wrapped and looped round and round by tiny hands, encircling arms and legs and heads. After the madness was over and the giggles quieted down, my girls definitely got a kick out of how funny I looked. After each DBC was fully clad as a mummy, we all were then required to have a mummy dance-off contest. Silly enough, I won for the best “Robot Mummy Dance”. Don’t ask. Ha.



Aside from all the games, costumes, and dancing, there was one particular event of the entire JDBC Halloween Clinic that blew every other special part out of the water. I’m talking about the secret performance by the Head JDBC Instructors. Unfortunately, this show was not open to the public, but it should have been! All the Head JDBC Instructors (including some amazing DBC Alumni) choreographed a spectacular show to perform for the JDBC girls as a special Halloween treat. The theme was “Music through the Decades”. They had it all down to a tee…impersonations of (and this is only a list of a few): Elvis, Saturday Night Fever, AC/DC, Michael Jackson, MC Hammer, Beyonce, Justin Bieber, and even a huge finale dance routine as LMFAO! They had costumes, wigs, dance moves, acting, props, you name it! To say the least, it was pretty awesome.

I hope you all were at the October 30th home game and had the chance to see the pre-game Halloween performance by the JDBC girls alongside your own Denver Broncos Cheerleaders. We had a lot of fun acting like monsters and zombies and dancing to some classic Halloween favorites. I hope you enjoyed it too! Next up will be a very special holiday performance by the JDBC girls at Sports Authority Field at Mile High to wish everyone Happy Holidays. So get ready for another great show! I’ll see you then. Go Broncos!

-Sam