A group of Revere High School (RHS) senior cheerleaders and boys performed the annual senior dance for the men’s basketball senior night.
At Revere High School’s senior night basketball game, the annual halftime dance brought excitement as senior boys took the court for a choreographed performance. The tradition, started in 2014, has become a favorite moment of the basketball season and school year.
Senior cheerleader Ava Farnham has helped coordinate the event for the last four years.
“My favorite part of this tradition is coming up with the dance to try and make it funny to watch,” she said.
Head cheer coach Kelly Staats, who has overseen the performance since it began, explained the process she and the cheerleaders go through to make this performance the best they can.
“The senior cheerleaders and I choreographed and made the music edit. Then the girls make a list of any senior boys that would like to participate. The senior cheerleaders teach the boys the dance,” she said.
Preparing for the performance took 4 weeks of practice, with senior boys, Ben Eberhardt, Lucas Weinert, Aj Hall, Aidan McKee, Rowan Klein, Kyle Yost, Donovan Farrow, Christian Albers, Carl Selig, Jacob Thomas, Aj Catlett, and Gavin Boltz learning the routine from the cheerleaders. Twice a week, they worked on their moves. Senior Christian Albers, a participant in the dance, found the practices to be essential to mastering the routine.
“The dance as a whole is pretty hard to remember, so we broke up the dance among each of our practices. This way of doing it made the process much easier,” he said.
One of the biggest challenges for the group was synchronization. With thirteen performers, getting every move to match took extra effort.
“There are 13 guys, so synchronizing our dance moves was quite a struggle. At times, we also had to improvise moves into the dance. But the largest struggle of all was choosing the outfit we would wear the night of the dance,” Albers said.
Farnham also noticed some other issues among the guys.
”A common struggle I’ve seen is that some of the guys don’t have much rhythm and it’s harder to teach them the dance,” Farnham said.
Despite obstacles, including winter weather canceling school and practices, the team stayed committed. Staats, who is retiring after this year, made sure the boys could still prepare even when they couldn’t practice in person.
“When school was canceled, we sent practice videos so the boys could refresh their memories of the choreography,” she said.
For many of the senior boys, this was their first time performing a dance routine, but the experience was rewarding. Albers, who decided to participate after seeing friends sign up, had always wanted to be part of the tradition.
“I heard they needed a few more guys and I had some friends already signed up. I’ve seen the dance from previous years, and it looked like a lot of fun,” Albers said.
The halftime dance has become an integral part of senior night at RHS, bringing students together for an unforgettable moment. Each year, the tradition continues to create lasting memories for both the crowd and its participants.
