The Varsity Poms Team looks to build on last season’s eighth place finish at Sectionals.

First year Varsity Head Coach Amber Bell and Assistant coach Callie Gliwa lead the Tigerettes competition dance squad this year. The Tigerettes also have 8 seniors all acting as team leaders for the younger ladies: Haley Wolfe, Megan Svara, Haley Kozar, Brianna Hanneman, Elena Argoudelis, Aubrey Clark, Whitney Ditmar, and Stephanie Hipps.

In three out of the last four competitions the tigerettes placed top ten, already improving on last year’s performances when they lost at sectionals.  They compete in two types of dances, hip hop and jazz, relying on their jazz dance for the bigger competitions.

The jazz routine features the song “Fire Under My Feet” by Leona Lewis. In this routine the girls wear red glimmering dresses to signify the fire.

“Fire under my feet describes a struggle and the ability to eventually overcome it. We dance with a lot of strength and determination. The dance is filled with many challenging aspects and is also used as an outlet to tell a story of perseverance” said Senior captain Elena Argoudelis.

Last year, the girls fell short of qualifying for state in sectionals, it seems that this song choice also tells the story of the girls picking themselves up from last year and beating the odds to come back and prove everyone wrong this year.

“This describes our fight during this season and continuing on from last year’s competition season. I feel that the dance is something that most people can relate to, so it makes it that much easier for us as dancers to commit to the routine and to pour every last ounce of existence into this dance”, said Senior Haley Wolfe.

At conference the lady Tigerettes scored an 85.6 taking 3rd place out of 8 competing teams. Then again at sectionals, they scored an 88.0 taking 5th place out of 16 competing teams.

“For the first time all season, we are not making major changes to the routine. Our goal is to improve our confidence with the choreography and work on the performance and showmanship of the routine. This includes cleaning, cleaning and cleaning some more every section of the dance” said head coach Amber Bell.

With the qualifying scores from conference and sectionals, the Tigerettes complete their goal of making it to State this year.

The lady tigers head to U.S. Cellular Coliseum in Bloomington, Illinois for State this weekend through January 30.