Our Buffalo Jill of The Month, while not being the longest tenured Jill or even the face of the squad, is probably the most well-known Buffalo Jill of all. Laura, who just completed her sixth and final season on the Ambassador Squad, was already well-known as the Martin Girl, the face of Martin Archery. Originally from Utah, she grew up as an outdoors type of girl and a couple years after her marriage, she and her husband moved to Western NY. After becoming more proficient in archery, Laura landed the spot of the Martin Archery Girl, appearing at shows across the country, making lots of friends along the way, many of whom have supported her in her various endeavors over the years.
In 2007, she decided to give NFL cheerleading a shot and landed a spot on the Jills Ambassador Squad. As an ambassador, her role was to interact with fans at tailgate parties and at appearances around the area, a role she showed quite quickly she could excel at. Most cheerleaders have to balance their duties on the squad with school, work, and family responsibilities but Laura had to do a little more when you consider all the time she spent on the road at the different shows that Martin Archery needed her at. Luckily, scheduling on her appearances for those shows was flexible enough that she was able to stick to weekends the Bills were on the road during football season and she only missed a few Jills events due to them. In 2009, when the Bills were slated to play in the Hall of Fame game, she had a show in Indiana the day before and, with the help of a friend already in Canton for the game, she was able to meet up with her squad for the game on Sunday.
Even though Laura specialized in meeting and greeting people and never tried out for dance, she still loved to dance and got a few opportunities to do so with the Jills. In 2011, she took the opportunity when the Jills brought in close to 150 alumni for a pregame performance in recognition of breast cancer awareness. In addition to all the alumni, all but a handful of the Jills ambassadors joined the dancers on the field for that performance. The alumni and ambassadors put in 3 weeks of practices to get prepared for the performance and, wanting to do a good job with it, then-Ambassador squad co-captain Laura was as focused on learning as I had ever seen her.
Away from the field, she’s stayed in the public eye in ways besides her role as the Martin Girl. Over the summer of 2010, she had her own hunting series on ESPN2 in which she not only taught viewers about hunting, archery, and fishing, but learned a lot as well. Her next big project was as the host of Buffalo’s CW23. Through a series of auditions in which she competed against dozens and dozens of Western NYers, including some of her squadmates, Laura got the chance to host a morning show in Buffalo as well as make appearances for the station all over Western NY. After giving that up, her creative juices wouldn’t let her relax so, with the assistance of three of her squadmates, launched a website and YouTube Channel about dating called “Tell Me How You Really Feel” in which she, Courteney, Jacki, and Alyssa B would discuss dating do’s and don’t’s to try to help men better understand women in the dating world.
Now that she’s retired from a Jills career that had her finishing up as the captain of the Ambassador Squad, she’s going to have plenty of free time to do more of what she wants. So far she’s been getting more involved in marathons alongside her husband as a member of Team RWB, an organization whose goal it is to enrich the lives of America’s veterans by connecting to their communities through physical and social activities.
You can learn more about Team RWB at http://teamrwb.org/ and more about Laura at http://buffalojills.com/profile.php?PID=65
