On Saturday, Nov. 15, the RM Poms team hosted tryouts for the winter season. This being the first time in a while that the team has opened tryouts for winter, and with smaller teams on the rise, and the pre-existing team already being so close knit, it makes us wonder, why expand a team that’s already so strong?
Although from the outside, the RM Poms team looks small in size, for poms a small team offers many advantages. It allows for the coaches to provide more personalized attention and individual development, and it allows the team as a whole to focus and train in a more concise manner. With this in mind, size definitely was not a contributing factor for holding tryouts, “it wasn’t really a lack of people, because small teams are like becoming more common, so like that wasn’t really something we were worried about,” senior captain Alyssa Tyler said.
The mindset that the team can only improve was consistent throughout tryouts, and when looking for their new addition the team wanted to find someone who could match their energy and skill set. “..we had any new person who was interested tryout by themselves so we could like see how they are and we really wanted someone who could meet us where we are and, like people who could just like pick up stuff really quickly, and are just very experienced dancers, and luckily we got that,” sophomore captain Audrey Markel said.
A search for knack and dedication was also crucial to the deciding factor of who would be a new addition, but at the end of tryouts only one was granted a spot on the team. “It was more so just like to add more talent to the team, it was more the mindset like, it can only get better, so we might as well just add in more people who were willing to like make that commitment and just help out our team,” Tyler said.
However, with a new team the dynamic can be thrown, but since only one new member was acquainted this year it made bonding easier. Many pre-existing friendships had already been in place with the new team member and a healthy team atmosphere and mutual trust were two common ambitions that carried a lot of importance. “It’s definitely different, having like a different group, but it didn’t change much and there were already a lot of previous relationships with the new member, and so I think it was really easy for the new member to just blend right in and like become part of the camaraderie we already had,” Tyler said.
Aside from team bonding, the team hopes to improve in other areas as well. Camaraderie being crucial and a constant focal point, the team also hopes to drive themselves to best apply skills from practices into their routines, and with a new member this does add stress. “I think we just need to, be able to just, like focus in more, and just really like apply everything that we’re doing, because everyone can do what we’re trying to do, and I think it’s just a matter of applying, and yeah,” Markel said.
Tryouts in general introduced a feeling of hope and excitement for the team’s future, “one thing I really noticed was we actually had a lot more interest in being on Poms than the fall season, which made me really happy and made me like look forward to even just like next year and everything, so that just like gave me a lot of encouragement,” Markel said.
