Reality set in when Stefani Swaim strutted onto the sidelines for her first game as a cheerleader for the New England Patriots. Before that, it didn’t feel real.
“That’s when I knew I’m a Patriots Cheerleader,” Swaim said. “This was my dream and it is super exciting.”
The St. Joseph High School alumna didn’t know what to expect when she cheered in her first pre-season home game against the Philadelphia Eagles on Aug. 15.
Surrounded by screaming fans in a stadium that seats more than 68,000, the former Knight had come a long way from Al Maguire field where she danced at football games back in high school.
The Sun chatted with the 23-year-old professional cheerleader at her alma mater while she was in Santa Maria visiting her family over Labor Day weekend.
Swaim graduated from St. Joe’s in 2009. She had cheered on the varsity squad her freshman year, and performed on the dance team as a sophomore, junior, and senior.
She has danced since the age of 3, performing numerous recitals at the Ethel Pope Auditorium, but wasn’t sure if she could make a career out it.
She stuck with her passion and majored in dance at the University of California, Irvine, where she graduated in 2013.
“UC Irvine taught me not to give up and audition for as many things as I possibly could,” she said.
Before being hired by the Patriots, Swaim was turned down by Disney and two dance agencies. She tried out for the Los Angeles Lakers and made it to the finals, but decided to move out of California. The Patriots hired Swaim in May 2014, after a month-long audition process that ended with a two-week boot camp.
“They were the longest, most vigorous auditions I’ve ever done,” she said. “I knew that if I wanted to be on the Patriots I had to push through.”
Her intense training immediately paid off when she and her new squad flew down to Mexico to shoot photos for the team’s 2015 calendar. The week-long photo shoot was made into a TV show, called From Sideline to Shoreline, which aired on CBS in Boston and can be seen on the Patriots’ website.
The calendar comes out Sept. 11, and Swaim is featured with one of her teammates for the month of June.
The Patriots cheerleaders practice at least twice a week, where they learn new routines and rehearse what they already know.
Swaim said that since she’s joined the patriots, she’s had to watch out for people who just want to be her friend because she’s an NFL cheerleader, and she tries to remember to keep the important people close.
Her mother, Shelli, flew to New England to see her cheer at a pre-season game against the Carolina Panthers on Aug. 28.
“I’m so proud of her,” Shelli said. “People think that cheerleading is all about a bunch of pretty faces, but it is a lot of hard work, and I’ve seen her go through it.”
This article appears in Sep 11-18, 2014.