Comet Pom Squad ready to step up at ISDTA Championships

By John Burbridge sports@charlescitypress.com

CHARLES CITY — Football season is long. Basketball season is even longer.

But dance season nearly encompasses both of them.

“We started early in September and we’ve been working hard ever since,” said Keisha Cunnings, the dance director/head coach for the Charles City Pom Squad.

“We performed during the football homecoming, and now with basketball starting up, we’ll be performing at every home game.”

The Comet Pom Squad will also be making its third straight appearance at the Iowa State Dance and Drill Team Association Team Championships, Nov. 30-Dec. 1 at the Wells Fargo Arena/HyVee Hall in Des Moines.

Last year, Charles City received a Division 1 rating and placed sixth in its division.

“We just missed getting a trophy,” Cunnings said. “The top five in each division get a trophy.

“Hopefully, this year we can bring one back.”

Or two.

The Charles City Pom Squad is a relatively new program that started three and half years ago when several students approached Cunnings, who works at the school as a teacher’s aide, to help them start a pom/dance team and for her to be their coach.

Cunnings agreed, and working with Charles City activities director Todd Forsyth, the Comet Pom Squad was born.

It was too late in the school year to participate at the aforementioned Team Championships, but Charles City did participate in the next two competions.

“There are some teams down there that competed in five different routines,” Cunnings said. “Since we were just starting out, we just did one routine.”

That routine was “Poms”. For this year’s competition, Charles City will do two: Poms and “Hip-Hop”.

“It takes a lot of work to get two routines down,” said Cunnings, whose team also does “Jazz” dance. “They’re not the same.”

This year’s Comet Pom/Dance team has 13 dancers.

The team will host a Pom/Dance event Jan. 27 starting at 4 p.m. inside the Competition Gym. Squads expected to perform will be from NIACC, New Hampton and other schools, as well as performers from the Charles City Dance Arts Centre.

“We’ve been to these exhibitions before,” Cunnings said, “but this will be the first one we host.”