One Can Make a Difference by Ingrid Newkirk

Author:Ingrid Newkirk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: F+W Media, Inc.
Published: 2008-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

BONNIE-JILL LAFLIN

From Pom-Poms to Playbook

The photographs of Bonnie-Jill Laflin that you see if you click onto her Web site are jaw-droppers. Sometimes wearing little more than a cowboy hat and a pair of tight denim shorts, her pearly white teeth visible behind a dazzling smile, Bonnie-Jill is the quintessential all-American pin-up (a fact not lost on the troops she has entertained on her USO tour of Iraq). It would surprise no one that this model and dancer guest-starred on Baywatch, has been named one of Maxim’s “Hot 100 Women,” and was a cheerleader with the Golden State Warriors, the San Francisco 49ers, and the Dallas Cowboys (2,500 girls auditioned for that job). What is likely to surprise anyone is that she is the first female scout for the NBA.

I met Bonnie-Jill when she posed for PETA’s poster against the rodeo that reads: “No one likes an eight-second ride.” And while men in sports have discovered that behind those drop-dead looks there is a woman who knows the teams, the players, and the stats, I discovered a kindhearted person who once stopped her car to scoop up a little dog that was being beaten by two youths and has protested the bullfight. All that aside, for anyone who has fought for his or her dream, Bonnie-Jill Laflin is worth listening to.

I have always loved sports. My father was a policeman who moonlighted as a bodyguard for sports figures like Jerry Buss, the owner of the Lakers, so I’ve been around men in sports my whole life. I looked up to them as a kid; they were like my big brothers. Everyone in my family, from my dad, with his various season tickets, to my uncle to my mother, was an avid sports fan. My dad took me to my first game when I was two years old. After that, we went to all the football games, baseball games, and basketball games. I remember people would see me sitting in the stands and would say, “Oh, get the little girl some Crackerjacks or some of that candy,” and I would think, “No! I don’t want that. I want to watch. I want to know how fast that guy ran the forty.” I soaked up stats like a sponge. When the paper was delivered in the morning, another kid might have grabbed the funnies, but I grabbed the sports pages. I loved playing sports and talking sports and watching sports, and I knew I always wanted to be in sports.

Sports is very much a man’s world. It is now, and was even more so a couple of decades ago. I never dreamed I could break into it professionally. Fortunately, I loved to dance. I knew my dancing could get me into cheerleading, and then I’d have the best seats in the house! When I was eighteen, I started cheerleading for the NBA and then the NFL. My most prized possession is the Super Bowl XXIX ring I won when I was cheering for the 49ers.

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