That group of space cheer leaders that came and cheered us is bunch of MN girls who started doing that at CONvergence. As far as I can tell from the flickr contacts this person doesn't know them.

Incidentally, after a few years of me doing Luftwaffle, The Onion had one of those front page story summary things that made the same wordplay (they also used my backup joke: Blintzkrieg). I have no idea if they came up with it independently or not.