Photo courtesy of Sullivan Reed

Led in front by seniors David Bowers and Gabriel Manzano, the male poms team leans backward during their performance. This part of the routine was something many have seen during the football games by the female poms team, so it resulted in many cheers and screams from the crowd.

To finish off the spring pep rally, Poms gets set to kill a two minute dance routine. Students begin to get riled up, awaiting for their routine to begin and anticipating the “snake”, along with plenty of other typical dance moves that we see performed by them. But this time it’s different. It isn’t our normal poms team. It is none other than the male poms squad.

Without much guidance, senior poms captains Julia Beato and Olivia Cardoni led the charge by gathering a team of 15 boys and choreographing the piece on their own. Beato wanted to keep in mind that the dance was supposed to be fun and exciting for the crowd to see. Taking this into account, Beato and Cardoni decided to choose more recent songs and added trendy dances to the routine.

“We knew the dance was supposed to be kind of goofy and funny and not too challenging so we made it a lot easier and could add things to it that people are familiar with. We also used some of the choreography from football games to supplement the other stuff,” Beato said.

The schedule ended up being a lot more rigorous than many of the boys had imagined with two weeks of two hour practices twice a week. The team was pretty dedicated despite some concern of commitment. Everyone was able to attend most of the practices and they took it seriously when they needed to.

“All of the rest of the senior guys involved wanted to make sure that the performance was something that looked good and entertained the school during the pep rally. Having one common goal made it a great bonding experience for all of us,” senior Miguel Toloza said.

Male poms gave these 15 guys something to look forward to as senioritis has vastly taken over the minds of many. Chugging along through the end of the year can get quite difficult, but the low pressure environment of male poms helped to bring some ease and relaxation to the lives of these stressed seniors.

“It was fun to be a part of a WJ tradition that I’ve wanted to be a part of since freshman year, and to do it with my friends and perform in front of the school was a great opportunity I’ll never forget. It was a great way to unwind after a long day of school,” senior Jakob Sandberg.