Warrior girls amp up the glam

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Dressed in skimpy, sparkly, blue and yellow outfits and armed with gold-coloured pom-poms, they are the cutest warriors you’ll ever come across. Meet the bubbly cheerleaders from the Golden State Warriors NBA team — Leah, Lisa, Casey, Karlee, Samantha and Patrisha — who are currently in the capital to perform at the NBA 3X tournament this weekend in Delhi.

The squad is “super” excited about their first trip to India and unanimously feels that they “never want to leave this country”. The girls have already tried out the spicy Indian food, and loved it. The girls say, “We had dosas and spicy chicken curry. We even tried puri-bhaji, rotis and masala. We went to Dilli Haat and shopped. Now we are looking forward to a memorable performance at the venue. Whether it’s a crowd of five or five thousand, it doesn’t matter.”
So have they prepared anything special for their first Indian performance? Patrisha Yabes, the youngest of the lot, replies, “We will be doing six different routines. There will be a mix of songs and a few Bollywood numbers too which the audience can relate to.”
Even though their professional life is all about dancing and cheering for their home team, these girls never get tired of smiling and practicing their moves whenever they have time. Karlee Marie Joice, who loves to insist on the “double E” in her name, says, “It’s my fourth season with the team and I love basketball. We mostly have hip-hop style dance routines and back home, we are 18 of us in the team.”
Lisa Murray adds, “We practice five days a week and it’s fun as we keep inventing new dance moves all the time. On a regular basis we have 14 games in one season and we prepare 80 different routines for each season.”
Speaking about the costume of the team, Casey Patricia Grimes, who started as a professional ballet dancer, reveals, “We have a designer who creates outfits for our team. Our current costume is in yellow and blue, which are our team colours. The ‘W-G’ emblem is for our team and we have loads of glitter as we represent California, which is the golden state.”
Speaking about their favourite basketball players in the team, Samantha Suan, who has been part of the team for three seasons, says, “In the US, basketball is huge and there are many NBA fans. We like many of the players, and in the current team David Lee and Klay Thompson are good.”