The music pounded, the crowd cheered, and the team entered. The bleachers in the gymnasium filled with Panther Pride at the pep rally on Friday, September 7th. To kick start the fall football season, Variations, African Heritage Club, the Cheerleaders and Chattonettes danced, the Pep Squad preformed a skit and all of the students recited the alma mater.
The Pep Squad held a relay race skit between the Panther mascot and senior, Sam De la Cruz dressed as a Cavalier – the mascot of Coral Gables Senior High – . The relay race consisted of hula hooping, doing push ups and catching a football passed by a squad member. Needless to say, the Panther won. Although, in the first performance, the Panther dropped the football.
“[The pep rally] wasn’t really organized,” junior Alexa Rodriguez said. “It seemed rushed and last year’s were a lot better.”
Although the shorter than anticipated duration of the rally aggravated students, the audience seemed very fond of the dancers. The Variations dance team, now in the process of raising money to dance their way to New York for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, always serves as a crowd-pleaser.
“I think the dancing has improved throughout all of the dance teams,” senior Alex Heinz said.
This year, two pep rallies took place in one day. In the past, there would be one start-of-the-season pep rally that half of the school would go to and the homecoming rally later in the year that the other half would attend. On Friday, everyone in the school received their fair share of pep.
