Anaheim, Calif. ? Don’t call Deanna Doyle and Kelly Howell Crimson Girls anymore.
This year the KU seniors are members of the Kansas University Dance Team, a renamed division of the Jayhawk Spirit Squad that also includes KU cheerleaders and mascots.
“It’s a mouthful,” concedes Doyle, from Overland Park.
“We can’t be girls anymore,” Howell said. “It’s supposed to be more mature.”
“Politically correct,” Doyle added.
The two are among six dance-team members to make the trip to Anaheim, Calif., for the NCAA West Regional. They’re doing everything they can to make sure KU moves on to next week’s Final Four in New Orleans.
Call them superstitious, but they’re still eating Snickers bars before every performance, just like they always do.
“And, yes, we paid for them — 44 cents each,” said Howell, also from Overland Park.
They hit the breakfast buffet each morning at the team hotel, finishing with a banana to go.
And for the past two weeks they all have been riding in the same seating arrangement on the bus after games to make sure they don’t mess with the streak.
Come tonight, “We’re either going to be wild with excitement,” Doyle said, “or very sad,” Howell finished.
Either way, they’re destined to show maturity.
First they couldn’t play Disneyland. Now they can’t even make it to the beach.
The KU pep band’s scheduled trip to Newport Beach was grounded Friday by blustery winds, some of which were said to have reached 50 mph.
“It wouldn’t have been much fun to be out there today,” said Tom Stidham, who conducts the band at courtside.
The Baywatch ban came the same day the musicians had hoped to play in the Magic Kingdom, but that plan already had been scrapped because Stidham did not want to jinx the Jayhawks by making arrangements for Friday’s off day before Thursday night’s game.
Friday’s winds proved at least moderately entertaining for one Jayhawk.
Nick Collison, fresh off a 33-point, 19-rebound performance in Thursday’s semifinals, challenged the wind as he stepped outside the team hotel with coach Roy Williams and guard Kirk Hinrich. They were headed to the Arrowhead Pond for interviews with CBS.
Before ducking into a car, Collison leaned into the whipping wind and struck a pose of strong defiance — a flex like the Incredible Hulk’s and later spoofed by Hans and Franz on “Saturday Night Live.”
Win or lose, the Jayhawks intend to return to Lawrence early Sunday morning.
The team’s charter flight is ticketed to fly out of Long Beach after the game.
The plane will fly into Forbes Field in Topeka, where the team will board a bus for the ride back to Allen Fieldhouse.