As football season begins, the Oakdale High School Poms team takes the field with their dance moves and teamwork. Pom dance is a form of dancing while using pom poms. It’s a style that is mostly performed by high school and college students. During halftime, at home football games, the dancers perform their rehearsed routines to keep the attention of the audience. 

Kai Bragg, a sophomore at Oakdale High School, shares her point of view and explains her goals and the team’s goal for this season: “Overall we want to make sure that we are united on the field and learn the routines as quickly as possible to ensure more practice time.”  

Bragg makes it known that each individual team member has their own goals as well. When asked about her personal goals, she answers, “To be a good co-captain, and ensure that everyone is on task and understanding the dances well.” 

Most people would consider trying out for Poms, for either their liking to dance or just finding an interest in the team. For Bragg, she always had a liking to dance when she was younger and has done poms before. When moving up to high school she took the opportunity to be a part of the community and continue doing something she enjoys.

“It was a great way to meet my classmates in and out of the school setting and get to know them better. The idea of being a part of something bigger than myself being on a team made me excited and the fact that we got to hold pom poms intrigued little 7 year old Kai.” 

When joining poms there is a tryout process. After 3 days of learning a routine, kick line, technique, students come back to do their official tryout. On tryout day, performance and presentation is analyzed as well as memorization. 

The leadership team puts together some choreography and sometimes teammates might have some ideas and bring some suggestions. Bragg describes her process when thinking of choreography, “I hear a song that has a good tempo and beat to dance to and have the lyrics inspire me. Other times I have a cool idea in my head.”

Although Poms performs during halftime at home football games, the team also has the opportunity to do basketball season, Senior Night, and also Homecoming.

Melissa Watson, a teacher at Oakdale High School, also coach of the Poms team, tells about her motivation to be a coach for Oakdale’s Poms team: “I used to be a coach at Urbana High so then when Oakdale was opening they asked me if I wanted to start the team over here.”

Watson additionally shares her insight on what she wants for the team this season. “After football season I ask the girls if they want to continue on for basketball season. We have competed for the past couple years pre-Covid, so our competitions haven’t been happening. We hope to get back to that soon.”

Watson goes onto explain she wants the team to work with one another and look like one person and not 20 girls on the field 

While the season begins, the team is excited for what is to come and coming powerful and set on this season. Their determination will only make them stronger as a team and we can’t wait to see what’s coming next for the Poms team.