The St. Louis Pom Squad has performed two football half-time routines this fall, and now has an exciting competition on the way in November.
Senior Ava Frost stated, “I feel as though our halftime performances have gone pretty good so far, with having so many new people on our team!” With there only being three more half-time performances for the season, sophomore Gracie Lombard commented, “I think we’ve done amazing so far, and I can’t wait to see how the rest of the season goes.”
Typically their first competition isn’t until regionals, but this year the team has added a new event to the schedule. This event takes place on the first Sunday of each November. This year, the 33rd Annual Hip Hop & High Kick Championship will take place Nov. 5, at the Dow Event Center in Saginaw, Michigan. However, this competition has more to do with dance than poms.
Teams will perform a routine based on a certain theme. Lombard further explained, “High Kick is a themed hip-hop/dance/pom competition, so you pick any theme and you dress up in costumes and get themed music and perform to it and it’s so fun!” The Poms team isn’t allowed to reveal their theme just yet. When speaking about the reveal, Frost stated, “We won’t be revealing our theme anytime soon. The High Kick Theme is kept a secret up until we perform. We may reveal it before we perform it.”
To prepare for this new competition, the poms team has been putting in hours of hard work. Lombard said, “We have two-and-a-half-hour practices two to three times a week where we practice for High Kick as well as football games for halftime and sidelines for pregame.” Coach Kaydee Komperda said, “I’m preparing the team for the competition by working with them on the routine constantly. Whether that be giving corrections, repeatedly going through the moves to achieve muscle memory, and always doing endurance (doing the routine 3-4 times in a row) at every practice to build stamina.” They have a month and a half left to work out the imperfections of the routine.
Graduating in 2017, Coach Komperda is a St. Louis alumni. When talking about her coaching career she stated, “It has been a blessing being the new coach of the St. Louis Varsity Pompon team! I have always wanted to coach my hometown’s pom team, so I couldn’t be happier. I’ve enjoyed getting to know my team, and I can’t wait to see how well they do this year!”
You can catch the Lady Sharks on Wheeler Field this Friday, Sept. 22, at halftime of the St. Louis versus Nouvel Catholic Central varsity football game.
