Eight girls in black uniforms with red and black pom-poms take to the gym floor with the cheerleaders. Flips, jumps, high kicks. The crowd goes wild.
They dance to songs like Katy Perry’s “Part of Me” and “Glad You Came” by The Wanted.
Swinging their hips and shaking their pom-poms, they smile at the student section, which doesn’t seem to be bothered by the smaller routines and the girls missing.
This year, the pom squad is smaller and, without any seniors, younger.
Senior Mackenzie Owens is one of two dancers who decided not to return to the squad at the end of last year.
“It was a really big time commitment, and it didn’t allow me to be involved in anything else, like any other sports or clubs,” Owens said. “So for my senior year I really wanted to make sure I was involved, and I wanted to try new things, so I decided pom wasn’t for me.”
Another change squad members are adjusting to is their new coach, Loralea Wood, who relocated from Free State.
Wood has several goals for the squad this year, including “to get better as a whole, to increase skill level, to prioritize performances and make them better quality than quantity,” Wood said. “And just learning our roles on the team … I think that we’re in that learning process of leadership versus seniority and how we even that out where everyone feels like an equal part of the team.”
Squad members said they are happy with the new coach.
“I really like her,” said junior Katie Lomshek, team captain. “I’m glad she came to LHS… [She’s] way more efficient.”
While last year’s squad had 10 members, this year, the squad was initially worried they would be down to only six. A second round of tryouts was offered in April and two more members, sophomore Haley Hobbs and freshman Nadia Laytimi, were added to the team.
“They were looking for more people, and I was thinking about doing it my freshman year, but I decided to wait,” Hobbs said. “Once I found out that they were allowing other sports I decided to try out, because if I could do more than one thing then I wanted to do it.”
However, Wood still believes the size of their squad will be challenging.
“I think the biggest difficulty is how small we are with just eight,” Wood said. “Building on that, and finding your strengths, and being creative with formations, and being creative with making them look bigger and dancing bigger [are some] of our goals for this year, and increasing the number of girls interested in our program.”
Despite these challenges, Wood already feels optimistic about the squad’s ability to adapt.
“They’ve really been working well together and meshing well together,” Wood said.