In a quiet hallway outside the gym, the cheer team ran through eight-counts, went back over dance moves and adjusted their footwork. With the pep rally just a few days away, they weren’t just practicing – they were building the cheer team’s first student-led routine.

Senior cheer captains Kaelei Patterson and Purity Macharia choreographed the cheer team’s pep rally routine with help from senior game day captains Mirabelle Fooshee, Mia Ortiz and Abigail Blum.

They choreographed and performed the jv and varsity dance routine to “Maria” by Justin Bieber, a pom dance to “You Drive Me Crazy” by Britney Spears and a stunt section during the Y2K-themed fall pep rally.

Cheer coach Leslie Dyer gave the senior cheerleaders the opportunity to apply for the position of cheer captain. Patterson was chosen as the dance choreography captain, and Macharia was chosen as the cheer choreography captain.

“There are different categories, and I chose dance choreography because I have a big passion in dancing,” Patterson said.

While Patterson and Macharia worked together in creating dances before, they wanted a third person’s point of view, so they recruited Fooshee and the other game day captains.

“It’s hard to make a dance with just one person,” Patterson said. “So we kind of added her in, and she’s been a big help to making the dance.”

Machari, Patterson and Fooshee first started choreographing the middle school tryouts together, which they enjoyed.

“We really loved working together and putting the effort in,” Macharia said.

A month before the pep rally, the choreographers started creating the pep rally routine while Dyer worked on the team’s dance skills, such as the pyramids and jumps. Then the choreographers worked together to select the music and match up dance moves with lyrics.

“And we put it all together,” Patterson said.

Fooshee said that one of her teammates heard the song “Maria” by Justin Bieber in her car and thought it would be perfect for their performance.

After they created the dance routine, they taught it to the rest of the cheer team and started making the formations, such as where to place their best dancers.

While the cheer captains showed the routine to their coach before teaching it to the team, the choreography was “purely student-led,” and Dyer was hands-off throughout.

“Our coach believes in us and realizes that we’re not going to put anything in there that is going to put ourselves out there in a negative way,” Fooshee said.

She said they make a great team because they almost always agree with each other whenever they share ideas.

“We all just collaborate together and make a dance that’s really good and deserves cheer dancers,” Fooshee said.

Patterson said it was hard to come up with unique movements that were also manageable for their dancers.

Not only were the choreographers under a lot of pressure due to time constraints, they also had to balance out creating the pep rally routine with their other extracurriculars.

“We even took the initiative to take it outside of cheer, too,” Macharia said.

The team worked together during advisory and outside of practice to bring their dance ideas to life.

“We just love creating ideas and putting our ideas together,” Macharia said.

Macharia said the teamwork, creativity and effort went into every count and formation of their pep rally routine.

“I am proud of how far we’ve come with the dance,” Macharia said. “The ideas that we created, the hard work, the communication, the accomplishment of what you see is just really beautiful.”