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Eskimos Cheer Team Dianne Greenough calls them “my Eskimos,” but she’s not referring to the football team. he Eskimos Cheer Team is recognized as the top acrobatic team, pro or college, in football. Greenough, who built a team that combines the moves of traditional pro football dance teams and U.S. college football acrobatic teams, has won personal awards galore. She’s won Edmonton’s Salute to Excellence, University of Alberta Alumni honours and the Millennium Excellence In Teaching award. As well, her cheer teams at the Victoria School for the Arts have won 52 city and provincial titles. She coached the gold medal-winning Team Canada in the ICU World Cheerleading Championships. In 35 years of coaching, including the 20 in which she coached the featured Eskimos Cheer Team, she’s led teams to over 200 championship trophies in Australia, Japan, Hawaii and all over Canada and the continental U.S. She also created the annual CFL Grey Cup Cheer Extravaganza, the Junior Eskimos Cheer Program and the Esks Cheer Alumni. Few know about the role she has played in choreographing the opening and closing ceremonies of numerous major international events, such as the 1988 Calgary Olympic Winter Games and the 2001 Edmonton IAAF World Championships In Athletics. As well, she created Dianne Greenough, head coach ceremonial packages for the Queen’s visit for and choreographer of the Alberta’s Centennial and for Grey Cups in 1997, Eskimos Cheer Team 2002 and 2010. For Greenough, it’s never been about “Rah, rah, rah, sis boom bah.” “I was at Victoria High School trying to ind something to involve inner-city girls dealing with drugs, alcohol, pregnancy and gang violence. I was young myself, and I wanted to ind something for them to keep busy and keep them of the street,” she said. A turning point came when Greenough drove three of her cheerleaders to a camp in Tacoma, where they were irst exposed to acrobatic cheerleading and decided that’s what they wanted to do. In 1995 Greenough was asked to develop an acrobatics co-ed cheer team for the Eskimos. She quickly produced a team that would become recognized as the best in North America. “he timing of that was so perfect. We’d just won the high school world championships in Japan in 1994. It was a special group, and I couldn’t imagine those girls graduating and not seeing them again. I wanted to stay connected with those kids, and taking them to the Eskimos was ideal.” “Every year we take our elite dance group to a professional workshop with the NFL and NBA teams in the U.S. and, while there’s no competition involved in that, they’ve certainly won the respect of everybody there. “We also take the stunt team to the U.S. college camp where there is a competition on the last day of camp, and at a very large percentage of those we’ve been very successful with both individual athletes and the team as well.” he recognition that the Eskimos cheer team, with its co-ed combination of dancing and acrobatics, is among the best in the world, comes from both groups. So—cheerleaders? Yeah, they’re Eskimos, too. 241