Pom Squad Wins State

Due to a string of bad luck this fall (fortunately, if you want to look at it that way), Kaitlyn's pom squad won their 1st state competition (in a long time) in Small Varsity Jazz. At the beginning of the summer, they started out with 16 girls, which put them in Large Varsity Jazz. This also meant going up against Westmoore HS out of Moore, OK (where the F-5 tornado went thru in 1999, 7 miles up the road from us). Westmoore has been the national dance champion for the last 2-3 years. It's the competition you see on ESPN each year out of Disney World in Florida. They are big-time good. Anyway, one of Kaitlyn's good (??) friends, who was one of the captains on Kaitlyn's squad got DRUNK AT LUNCH before a big pep rally back in August and was carted away by the Norman police and school administrators and is no longer on the squad. The other captain has a fracture in her back and is under doctor's orders not to do ANYTHING until they release her (possibly in December after the 2nd State Competition). So that put Kaitlyn's squad down to 14 people, putting them into the SMALL varsity jazz category. So, Norman High finally won a state competition and we didn't have to go up against Westmoore nor did we have to compete against our crosstown rivals, Norman North, who most years have a state winner in either pom and/or cheer. Last year our pom squad went to a Nationals competition in Fort Worth, TX (where we will go again this year) and won Nationals in Large Varsity Hip-Hop. However, we didn't have much competition in our category.

When Kaitlyn was on varsity cheer they were state AND national runners-up in the large co-ed division. They had a boy on their squad that just happened to be in Kaitlyn's stunt group as a base. I have a picture of Kaitlyn at State as a flyer. Anyhoo, the pom squad is all excited and looking forward to their 2nd State competition in December where they will compete in Small Varsity Jazz and Small Varsity Hip-Hop. As I mentioned above, we will go to Fort Worth for the Nationals competition in February. We're going to ride the Heartland Flyer Amtrak train down to the competition. It should be a lot of fun.