Dancing back from the brink

Just four years ago, competitive dance at Las Cruces High School was hanging by a very thin thread. The POMs team was down to just a small handful of athletes and in need of a lifeline.

According to head coach Lisette Martinez, who was new to the position that season, two dancers stepped up and helped save the program. Now the POMs team is thriving, and seniors Tara Gandy and Aliyah Juarez are a big reason why.

POMs is New Mexico’s competitive dance platform, combining performance dance with elements similar to cheerleading. The team performs at football and basketball games as well as events such as school assemblies.

Aliyah and Tara came to POMs from different backgrounds, but once involved, both have thrived as dancers and leaders.

Tara is a classically trained ballet dancer.

“I did ballet for 10 years,” she said. “I started when I was about 8. I was in a pre-professional company — two years as an apprentice and then one year as a company member when I was old enough.”

She took a break from ballet this year, deciding it was more than she wanted to take on during her senior year. When she arrived at Las Cruces High, Tara enrolled in the POMs fundamentals PE class taught by Martinez, who suggested she consider joining the team.

“I came from a private school, so I didn't really have a lot of friends,” Tara said. “I needed a community. I dance, so I thought I might as well just do it. That’s how I stepped into it. It’s been fun, and I’ve loved it.”

Aliyah, meanwhile, had no formal dance background when she took the POMs class, though her aunt had previously been involved with the program.

“I was going to choose cheer, but I realized there was a dance team,” Aliyah said. “I wanted to do something different because I did cheer in middle school. I joined the class, we learned basic motions of dance, and one day they asked me to try out for the POMs team. Coach Martinez picked me.”

At the time, the team had dwindled to just three seniors, leaving Martinez in the middle of a rebuilding effort.

“I was so scared because it was a specific kind of dance I’d never really done,” Tara said. “It’s the polar opposite of what you learn in ballet. I was meeting people I’d never met and doing things I’d never done, but eventually I got the hang of it.”

Aliyah, who described herself as shy, found the leadership role she took on as a freshman to be overwhelming at first.

“I wasn’t scared as much as I was really shy, so I stayed in my shell,” she said. “Once I got to meet everyone, I learned how to grow and get out of it.”

Performing at football games played a major role in that growth.

“You’re on a little patch of turf on the track and everyone’s watching you from the stands,” Aliyah said. “You see everyone you know just staring at you. I wasn’t used to that, but I had to learn to be more out there because people are watching.”

After recruiting about eight dancers for that first season, the team took off the following year.

Martinez embraced the challenge and began recruiting from her classes, where she saw potential in students like Aliyah.

“It was scary not knowing if we were even going to have a team,” Martinez said. “Our athletic director at the time said you can’t have a team or compete at state with just three dancers, so we knew we had to bring people in. It revamped our program — learning together and dancing together. For how new we were, our first year was very successful.”

Under the previous coach, Las Cruces High had typically fielded smaller teams, but that changed under Martinez.

“I’m from Texas, so I like bigger teams,” she said. “We got very lucky with some super talented dancers, and every year since then it’s been a blessing to have so many.”

While dance technique is important in POMs, energy plays an even larger role.

“Their energy, facials and sharpness are what they put out on the dance floor,” Tara said. “You feel it when you’re watching them. People don’t have to come from a dance background — if they bring energy, good facials and strong showmanship, that’s what makes them good at POMs.”

POMs routines are graded using a rubric, with judges scoring technique and artistry separately.

According to Martinez and her dancers, a larger team can actually help during judging.

“You might miss a couple of things, but you have 20 other people doing it right,” Tara said. “If one person messes up, it might not get caught. When you have a team of 10 or less, they catch everything.”

Beyond competition, Tara says the team has given her something even more meaningful.

“It’s all about communication and how you interact with your team,” she said. “Coming from not having friends my freshman year, having a community of girls you know you can come back to at the end of the day is so important. That bond means everything.”

Aliyah says that sense of connection has grown significantly over the four years.

“Our freshman year, we didn’t really communicate with the three older girls,” she said. “We were very isolated. A lot of misunderstandings can happen when there’s no communication. Someone’s going through something, but you don’t know because they don’t want to talk. I learned that building relationships matters most because it keeps the team together.”

Martinez says those two seniors have been instrumental in the team’s survival and success.

“POMs is survival of the fittest,” she said. “It’s physically demanding, and it can be mentally and emotionally demanding, too. But these two have stuck it out and always maintained an amazing attitude. We’ve gone through a lot, but we figure it out together as a team.”