Happy Sunday y’all! I hope everyone is enjoying their week. Today, I am going to talk about the Pilot Point Blackout Pep Rally. This big pep rally is where the entire gym goes pitch black (and the black lights turn on around the cheer mat) and the cheerleaders, band, etc. have to perform in the dark. The only things the crowd can normally see are the clothes on the people, and it’s really cool to see the effects the blacklight has on different colors. Blackout pep rallies are usually my favorite pep rallies anyway, but this Blackout has to be my all-time favorite!
This year, the cheerleaders generously gave us three minutes for the volleyball girls to perform a dance! Half of the volleyball team was thrilled and wanted to practice immediately, while the other half looked like I just told them their puppy died. It was truly that bad, the girls who didn’t want to dance were mortified. I attempted to get everyone to at least go out on the cheer mat, but they informed me only time (and the quality of our dance) would tell. We had known about this for about A MONTH and decided on making up the dance the night before. I learned that procrastination could reach all aspects of our lives that night. We decided it would be funny to reenact the dance battle from the popular movie “White Chicks.” After team dinner, the night before the pep rally, we sat down and planned our dance. Kassy and I, the only seniors who aren’t injured, wanted the White Chicks part which we soon discovered was harder than you think. We had to learn how to do a front flip! After about 2 hours of practice, we finally got the dance down! Now, all we had to do was execute it at the pep rally.
The day of Blackout was quite the hassle. First, we had girls experience pre-dance stage fright, girls forgot their parts, and we were afraid we wouldn’t have time to change into our costumes. Nonetheless, after our last class period of the day, we bolted to the locker room to ensure that we had enough time. To start the cycle of misfortunes, the 40 pack of glowsticks I bought DID NOT WORK, but we had amazing parents that went and got us glowsticks. We put on our white shirt drizzled with glow stick liquid, pink bandannas, and our white shoes. Under the black lights, we easily were the best dressed. As soon as it was our time to dance, we ran to the mat, and I felt my stomach turn upside down. First, the speakers we had to use since the sound system was broken WEREN’T WORKING. Then, as we tried to get in sync with the music, Shelby Malone (one of the girls who literally looked green when I told her we were dancing in front of the school) accidentally stepped on the black light and crushed it. Shelby, if you are reading this, the whole town of Pilot Point is not mad at you, no one hates you, and it’s always happened at Blackout pep rallies:). After these events occurred, it was hard to keep a straight face. But, then came me and Kassy’s front flip part. Nervous was an understatement. We had to get this or we would be doomed. To say the least, Kassy and I nailed the flip, and the crowd got the loudest it’s ever been when we did it! With that being said, we blanked out after the flip and just winged our dance moves, but we did nail the flip, and that’s all that mattered. Our team finished the dance-off with putting Brooke (another one who was mortified about this dance) into a high stunt. After that, we sprinted out of the gym and back into our locker room.
As soon as we entered the locker room, we shut the door and just started laughing hysterically. That was NOT what we wanted to look like, and the series of catastrophes throughout the dance made things 100000000 times worse. But, we all were smiling ear to ear and agreed that was the funniest thing that has happened in a while. We may not have looked as cool as we wanted to due to unfortunate circumstances and procrastination, but what a relief it was that we experienced that together, as a TEAM. My last Blackout is one I will never forget, both because of how embarrassing and amazing it was. I won’t forget us crying with laughter at how much fun we had and how funny the outcome of the dance actually was. This experience goes to show that 1) procrastination doesn’t work every time, 2) the volleyball team has some AMAZING dancers, and 3) never let Shelby Malone walk anywhere when she can’t see the ground.
Just Kidding, love you Shelbs!
Signing out,
Kimberly Burns (#8)
