Doubtlessly, the Powderpuff game was an event eagerly anticipated by many West students as the highlight of this year’s winter rally. Featuring solely seniors, the Powderpuff players were split into two teams: the Pink Pancakes and the Maroon Goons. Cheering them on from the sidelines, the manleaders performed several lifts as well as put on a special halftime show of their own, which was inspired by dance from the movie Mean Girls to the “Jingle Bell Rock”, with additional choreography added to the end.
In the few weeks leading up to the rally, manleaders practiced in thirty-minute sessions during workshop and lunch, learning basic tricks and lifts in addition to the dance choreography they performed during their halftime show. “I wanted to participate in a rally at some point by the time I graduated high school so I can feel involved. . . especially since Powderpuff is for seniors only,” manleader Jason Lin (12) explained.
Lin also described being trained by the cheerleading team as an eye-opening experience: “I feel like all the guys who participated in manleading can definitely say that cheer is way harder than they thought it was.” In the end, the manleaders’ performance was well-deserving of the praise the audience gave with their cheers.
However, the manleaders’ performance was not the only star of the show. Equally entertaining was the Powderpuff game, setting two teams of female seniors against each other in a game of flag football. Yumiko Kasai (12), who played on the Maroon Goons, described that her favorite part of the game was the social aspect rather than actual playing: “I think what I enjoyed most out of the whole experience was being able to practice the sport with other people that I don’t really get an opportunity to bond with.” In the end, the Pink Pancakes won with a score of 6-0 and a last-minute touchdown at the very end of the game. Despite her team not winning, Kasai commented that “none of us were complaining, we were all really happy for each other.” Ultimately, “there was a pretty strong sense of unity and we were all really supportive of one another,” she added.
