Ever since Boys’ Poms was first officially implemented as a part of Westminster’s Spirit Week, it’s been one of the most difficult events for students to organize. Between disqualifications, unfinished routines, and general disrespect towards the leaders for each grade, there are a host of issues that make Boys’ Poms performances extremely challenging to put on. These annually occurring issues raise a big question in the Westminster community with respect to the age-old tradition: Are a bunch of teenage boys really mature enough to put on a fully choreographed dance in a couple of weeks?
Morgan McManus, this year’s leader for tenth grade Boy’s Poms, divulged some of the struggles she’s experienced with some of the boys she’s been coaching over the past few weeks: “Last year it was the majority but this year there’s just a few that I need to weed out. [There have been problems with] Panting, inappropriate gestures such as humping, they’ll show up forty five minutes late with chicken and food. And they’ll just play basketball all practice and just won’t practice.”
Mrs. Brown, Westminster’s director of student life, also gave me some further insight into some of the issues some grades faced with putting on their performances in previous years: “There was a year where a group chose not to do a dance and there was a year where there was a group wasn’t prepared to do the dance and so at the last minute four or five guys decided to do an impromptu dance.”
However, despite the various issues that have arisen over the years, many members of the Wesminter community still believe that the boys do in fact have the maturity required to put in enough effort to produce quality dances.
One anonymous Boys’ Poms leader stated that in her experience, the boys she coached actually showed the dedication and focus needed to produce a solid routine : “I think they are mature enough. I think anyone can really do a dance like this as long as they just try their best, it’ll work out in the end. The effort has to be there, everyone wants to win spirit week, so when you have that drive to do well, you end up doing well.”
Furthermore, Taryn Cunningham, one of the leaders of eleventh grade Boy’s Poms this year, found that she actually enjoys leading Boy’s Poms due to the infectiously positive attitudes of her peers: “The boys are actually incredibly entertaining even though they can sometimes be really rowdy. They kind of make you forget about everything else that’s going on and they know have to have fun with it. Sometimes in lip sync its just this and this and this and the boys just know how to have fun with it.”
Personally, I believe that although there have certainly been some problems with Boys’ Poms over the years, As someone who has previously participated in the student-choreographed dance aspect of spirit week, I know that it’s fundamentally not that difficult to learn a two to three minute dance within a few weeks. Even though a lack of maturity can hinder progress, as long as there is some motivation to learn the dance, it can be done. The real challenge in putting on Boy’s Poms performances lies within the tasks of the leaders, who have to create a soundtrack for, choreograph, and teach the dance to their peers. However, if the leaders of Boy’s Poms are fine with taking on the responsibility of the roles and dealing with the rowdy boys they have to teach the dance to, I see no issue with it.
