In the summer of 1994, Tomoko Kojima was watching an NFL preseason game in San Diego as a part of her home-stay program. But it wasn't the Chargers or the visiting San Francisco 49ers that caught her attention. Instead, she couldn't keep her eyes off the cheerleaders.
Japan's Tomoko Kojima has reached the pinnacle of the cheerleading world by making the squad of the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
"They were just pretty," says the 26-year-old Kojima, who spent the last two seasons as a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Cheerleaders. "They looked really brilliant. I didn't understand football rules and couldn't speak English well at that time, but I never got bored during the game. I was so impressed with how well the cheerleaders communicated with the fans without speaking."