Jodi Kovar.Credit :
jodisdancexpression/TikTok; Juliet Peel Photography
NEED TO KNOW
- A woman is pulling back the curtain on the challenging audition process for the Kansas City Chiefs Cheerleaders
- Jodi Kovar, a dance instructor based in Alabama, opened up to PEOPLE about the challenging process she underwent when she auditioned for the squad
- Kovar called the audition “more difficult” than the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders audition, which she also tried out for
A woman is revealing some of the more surprising things she experienced while auditioning for the Kansas City Chiefs’ cheerleading team, after calling the audition the “most intense in the league.”
In a video posted to her TikTok, Jodi Kovar, who is a full-time dance instructor based in Alabama, opened up about her experience auditioning for the Kansas City-based football team’s cheer squad, after being cut after the second round.
Kovar, who shares dancing-related content on her social media, has over 15,000 followers on TikTok and leads her own online dance classes as well.
According to Kovar, the audition experience was “a lot more intense than some of the other NFL teams” that she has tried out for.
While Kovar says she didn’t make it to finals for the Chiefs’ audition process when she first tried out in 2024, she broke down the steps from the first and second rounds, which entailed submitting videos of pre-choreographed dances and her own solo, as well as five different virtual interviews with Chiefs’ cheer squad coaching staff.
Kovar spoke with PEOPLE, opening up about some of the other, more extreme aspects of the tryout process.
According to Kovar, when she tried out, the audition process for the Chiefs’ cheer squad was threefold. The first parts, which Kovar participated in when she auditioned, consisted of a four-part video submission as well as a series of interviews.
Two videos were centered around the Chiefs’ specific choreography that those auditioning had to learn and then record themselves performing. Another was a dancer-choreographed solo, while the final was a public speaking portion.
The second round, though still virtual, involved actual interviews with five different “judges,” Kovar says.
Some interviews were more just “getting to know you, like a little bit about your background and why you want to be a cheerleader,” Kovar explains.
However, others were, as Kovar puts it, slightly more “intense.” Kovar was quizzed on Chiefs’ specific trivia, which, though she studied for, she found to be much more particular than she had originally planned.
“I studied for it kind of after I got the notification that I had made it to the second round, which was maybe about five days before the first interview,” she recalls. “I definitely didn’t have a lot of the knowledge that was necessary. Like some things were just so specific I would’ve never guessed they would’ve asked.”
The interviewer asked Kovar about everything from the names of the Chiefs’ special teams coaches to who she would draft to the Chiefs if she were given a choice and why.
Kovar says that it is pretty common for NFL cheerleading teams to incorporate a public speaking portion into their interview to make sure that the cheerleaders are prepped and ready for any situation that they might find themselves in.
“They said that there are just diehard fans and they’ll actually come up to the cheerleaders and like quiz them and be like, ‘Who was the Hall of Famer from this year? And so they’ve basically said, ‘You need to be on point with all of your knowledge because these fans. They’re so diehard. You need to be as diehard as they are if you’re gonna represent this team,'” Kovar says of the feedback she received during the interview.
The third and final part of the audition, which Kovar admits she didn’t make it to but has learned about in her research, supposedly includes a two-day, in-person event where dancers perform the choreography that they have learned over the course of the process, a public speaking/trivia portion and even a fitness test.
Kovar admitted that, for many of the questions, she straight-up told the judges that she didn’t know the answers.
“So for the ones I didn’t know, I was honest,” she explains. “I’m like, ‘Honestly, I don’t know, but I would be happy to do research and get back to you.’ I did my best with the knowledge that I had, so.”
According to Kovar, the audition process was different from other teams that she has auditioned for, including the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and the Miami Dolphins team.
“Their dance style is a lot different from other teams, at least from like the teams that I’ve auditioned for,” she says. “It’s a lot more energetic and bouncy. It’s a lot more technical. Like we have leaps and turns and kicks where a lot of teams don’t have as much technique in their auditions.”
Kovar says she went into the audition unaware that different NFL teams had similar styles — a sort of all-encompassing “NFL cheer style,” but was surprised to learn that different teams have completely different styles, often drawn from the city where they are located.
She also speculated as to why the audition might have been more challenging than others: “Maybe they’ve just elevated their team because they’re Super Bowl winners and all. But they are just like some of the best of the best. So I think that’s why they just want their standards like super high.”
Kovar also told PEOPLE about some of the specific rules that she had to follow during her audition.
“There [were] rules for what we had to wear,” she says. “We did have to have a sports bra and like little shorts and it had to be either in white, red or black. And you couldn’t wear tights, which was really weird because a lot of the other teams require tights.”
Participants also had to film videos in full “game day” glam and with their hair down.
Kovar also said she found the Chiefs’ audition process to be “more difficult” than the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders’ audition, despite being cut after the first round when she auditioned for that team.
“The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders auditions are more competitive because more people audition for them, but the Chiefs was more difficult,” she explains.
Kovar, who has been dancing since she was five years old, didn’t re-audition for the Chiefs team this year, saying that if she were to come back, she wanted to come back “a hundred percent,” but plans to in the future.
