Cheering on the Seahawks

In Saturday’s Daily Bee, Seattle Seahawks Sea Gal Danae Rokstad detailed a love of cheerleading that has taken her from dance classes in Sandpoint to her rookie year as a professional football cheerleader.

That story can be accessed at bonnercountydailybee.com under the e-edition tab with yesterday’s date. The e-edition is free and open to the public this weekend.

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Danae and the rest of the Sea Gals marched on to CenturyLink field on Aug. 17 for a non-conference, home-opening game against the Denver Broncos.

The crowd went wild.

“We all looked at each other trying to figure out if they were cheering for us or the team,” she said. Funny thing, the Seahawks weren’t on the field yet.

Those same crazy, loyal Seahawks fans would later in the season shatter the record for the loudest stadium noise in NFL history.

How loud is it down on the field?

“The crowd noise is the loudest thing I have ever heard,” Danae said. It’s so loud the four squads of cheerleaders have to communicate with hand signals or wait for the musical cues.

“I am going to go deaf at an early age because of this experience,” she joked.

She also predicts that today’s crowd will break the old record of 138 decibels. That number measures louder than OSHA allows at construction sites.

While much has been made of the fact that the results of the crowd noise can actually show up on a Richter scale, Danae said she has never felt the field rumble but there is never a dull moment when CenturyLink Field is rocking.

“I keep looking up during the games and up and am amazed how crazy our fans are,” she said. “There is never an empty seat and everyone at the game is so into it. It’s unbelievable. The funny thing is they are also crazy about the Sea Gals.”

Many times fans will yell out individual Sea Gals’ names and give a thumb’s up.

The 33 Sea Gals are divided into four groups and are deployed to separate areas of CenturyLink Field. During the game they will switch sections many times.

Each Sea Gal is put in a squad based on height and hair color. The choreographer wants variety in each squad. Danae is in Squad 3 and she is the only rookie Sea Gal in the front row. This means she shows up in many photos and is often on TV.

A person might think that a cheerleader would have the best view of a Seahawks game. In reality, when the Seahawks are on offense many times the cheerleaders are between the fans and the players while the action is somewhere on the other side of many 200-plus pound athletes.

“They are HUGE,” Danae said. “Still, we are so excited with what is going on that I forget that sometimes I am standing only a few feet away from Russell Wilson.”

While the cheerleaders are aimed toward the field when the Seahawks are on offense, their attention is definitely toward the rabid fans (aka the Legion of Boom) when the Hawks are on defense.

“I have never seen our defense play,” Danae said.

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The life of a Sea Gal is everything Danae, 23, dreamed it would be … and more.

She averages 10 Sea Gal appearances a week. On Friday, she spent time at CenturyLink in the morning and another engagement in the afternoon at a retail store.

She is paid minimum wage for these appearances, practice time and games. The good news is she is paid in four hour blocks. That means a meet-and-greet at CenturyLink for an hour means four hours of pay. Washington’s minimum wage is $9.32 per hour.

She works part-time at the 520 Bar and Grill in Bellevue.

She tries to keep her private life separate from her Sea Gals’ life but those lines are seriously blurred right now.

Customers at her “other job” recently started whispering as she walked by that, yes, she is that Sea Gal. Even back home in Sandpoint over Christmas she was recognized at the 219 by an out-of-town guest who approached her and asked if she was a Sea Gal.

By rule, there are always at least two Sea Gals at every officially sanctioned appearance. They also have police escorts and security anytime they are in uniform.

The Sea Gals sign up for as many appearances as they can but many have full-time jobs and their schedules aren’t as flexible as what Danae has.

Since the Seahawks made the playoffs, Danae’s appearances have skyrocketed.

“This town has gone crazy,” she said. The fact that the arch-rival 49ers stand in the way of a Super Bowl appearance has amped things up even more.

Danae and Felicia Read, a Sandpoint friend who lives in Seattle, were having lunch one day in a Seattle restaurant.

Felicia’s dad, Ron, sent her a 49ers debit card as a joke. Felicia sprung for lunch and used the card. When the receipt came back from the waitress, someone had scribbled on it: “Go Hawks.”

The Tuesday and Thursday practices have stretched past midnight during the past two weeks.

“Thursday was our last practice before Sunday so we knew it would last forever — and it did,” she said.

So what does a Sea Gal receive besides making great connections while being paid minimum wage?

• A $3,000 uniform as well as Sea Gals workout gear.

• Free Gold’s Gym membership. “It’s pretty cool to be paid to stay in shape,” Danae said.

• Free tanning.

• Free hair styling and nails.

• MAC makeup at 40 percent off.

• Two seats at every home game.

While Danae has met all the of the Seahawks, the Sea Gals are warned not to “hang out” with the players.

The ever-positive Danae makes sure she throws in plenty of “when we win …” into her sentences.

If the Seahawks do defeat the 49ers today, the Sea Gals will spend a very busy week in New York leading up to the Super Bowl.

“Wouldn’t that be something?” she said. “I never could have imagined that I will be cheering in the Super Bowl.”

She has also heard rumors that the cheerleaders might receive Super Bowl rings if the team wins.

With the kickoff looming only a few hours away, why would Danae stop dreaming now? Those dreams have taken her from dance classes in Sandpoint to CenturyLink Field and maybe the Super Bowl.

Danae is the daughter of Jeff and Donna Rokstad of Sandpoint. Her brother, Jeff, is a soccer player at NIC.