Sharon Simmons has been a lot of things in her 55 years — an author, a fitness competitor, an actress, a grandmother — but on Saturday, she attempted to add one more accolade to her resume.
Simmons, along with hundreds of other hopefuls, auditioned for the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders on Saturday at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
"I thought about this when I was about 22 years old," Simmons told The Dallas Morning News. "I was a single mom, and I wanted to do it."
But funds, experience and raising her children delayed that dream for the next 33 years.
Simmons told the Morning News that she forgot her routine during the freestyle portion of the competition and had to make it up as she went, but it didn't derail her experience.
The commercial realtor competed in her first fitness competition at the age of 50. She has won nine of the 20 competitions she has entered and has turned that success into a career of fitness modeling.
She authored the book "Triple F: Fifty, Fit and Fabulous," runs the website fitnessanyage.com and has recently taken up acting, where she will appear in the upcoming reboot of "Dallas" on TNT, which currently shoots around the Dallas area.
But Saturday was the culmination of three decades worth of dreams.
"With me, it has been about the journey," Simmons said. "It literally has been about the journey. I've met incredible people, I've learned so many new things."
