Blog#4

High school cheerleading/dance/pom/and pep squads are often mistaken for each other. I can recall several moments in my own cheerleading career that people became confused about the differences between teams. My team and I were photographed in the newspaper, but the caption read ”Goodrich Dance Team”. My team had also been falsely introduced at a football game as well as pep assembly as the dance team. Students in school would always ask “you’re on the dance team or a cheerleader or something, right?” as if to assume that they are even relatively the same thing.

                I had a best friend for almost seven years; she was on the dance team freshman year through senior year, as I was on the varsity cheerleading team all four years of high school (All my dance team knowledge is from her, not from researched sources).To my best understanding, the main difference between a cheerleading team and dance team is that cheerleading is a sport, and dance is not. Dance, though a very physical activity is considered an art form. At my high school, dance was technically a club, meaning that they would receive no funding from the school. Cheerleading, a long-time school activity is provided a small budget, but most of the money we spent was fundraised ourselves.

                Both dance and cheer teams compete. Being a competitive team is a choice of course, but has come to be expected of most high-school teams. Another thing that people are usually unaware of is that dance teams want to be differentiated from Pom teams. Pom is a form of dance team that dances with more “robotic” motions, similar to cheer motions. A pep squad is nowhere even close to what dance or cheer teams are today, but somehow that phrase always seems to get thrown in there. A pep squad is simply an unofficial group of students creating posters and such with the goal of creating school spirit.

                The main problem here is that there will always be an “odd-man-out” school that will refer to their cheerleading team as a pep squad, or mix up a name and then it screws up hundreds of other peoples definitions of these different teams. Most people don’t really care to learn the specific differences, but knowing these differences can prevent members of these teams from being offended.

Above is a pom team, the pom-poms themselves do not make the team but is often a give-away when it comes to team pictures. Mid-driftsare usually mandatory with cheerleading uniforms(a long sleeved turtleneck undershirt). Also cheerleaders never wear tights with their uniforms, that is a dead give away that the team is dance or pom.