Party, Paint and Poms
Cheer and dance team celebrate each home football game with a car party.
Senior Paige Pankow paints her car window before the Papillion South football game.
Just like the football team, the dance team and cheer team have a pre-game ritual that prepares them for each game. This tradition has been perfected over many years.
Car Parties are the cheer and dance team’s tradition for each home football game of the season.
“There’s food and everyone can hang out and talk with their friends,” junior cheerleader Alexis Sokolewicz said. “We all ride together to the game and whoever drives gets their car painted with car paint. We drive through Papillion, playing music that gets us all excited for the game.”
A vast array of food served for dinner varies from house to house.
“There is a wide variety of food; it just depends on what the person hosting chooses,” Sokolewicz said. “It can be anywhere from a taco bar to catered food from places like Jimmy Johns [or] Fazoli’s.”
The dance and cheer teams have created many traditions over the years that are treasured by most.
“My favorite part about car parties is painting up the cars and going to the La Mesa parking lot to dance,” senior dance team member Paige Pankow said.
Car parties have improved both teams’ chemistry and ability to perform.
“The benefit of car parties is that dance and cheer get to bond together and get hype for the game,” Pankow said.
As this ritual has been going on for years, not much has changed in how car parties are celebrated.
“Since I was a freshman, almost everything has stayed the same besides the fact that some years, juniors had to drive because there wasn’t enough seniors,” Pankow said.
This tradition will continue next year and hopefully for more years to come.
“I want to continue doing car parties next year,” Sokolewicz said. “This tradition has been going on for a long time and we don’t plan on stopping it anytime soon.”
With car parties coming to an end for Pankow, she only wants to change one thing.
“If I were to change one thing about car parties, it would be to add another fun tradition to make them more exciting,” Pankow said.
Car parties will hopefully continue for much longer and will be celebrated between the dance team and cheer.
Tatum Jorgensen is a senior on staff for her third year, and is now acting as Entertainment Editor and Social Media Coordinator. She is involved in Dance...
