If you were to walk into the cafeteria after school, you would find a group of girls dancing and giving it all they’ve got. Then your eye would land on a particular girl with bright auburn hair. She’s tall, lean, and freckled, dancing with a little more passion than the others.

Ever since she was little, sophomore Allison Fair loved to dance. When she was just six years old, she began to take dance classes ranging from jazz to hip hop.

“I’ve always liked to dance. I danced when I was younger and in eighth grade I did cheer-leading, but I realized I liked the halftime portions more,” Fair said.

As Fair transitioned into high school, she discovered there was a way for her to do something similar to cheerleading, but not exactly like it.

“My mom saw a flyer for poms and tryouts were coming up in a couple of days, so I just decided to try out because I didn’t know what other option there were at the time and I loved to dance so I just chose poms. And I’m glad I did,” Fair said.

But looks can be deceiving. Poms isn’t as easy as it looks. It’s all about hard work and requires a lot of commitment.

“It’s much more work and a lot of practices so I definitely have to work on my time management. I like to get some of my work done at school when I have free periods and if not, I usually start my homework as soon as I get home. Since we’re in competition season, my coach has been adding practices on Saturdays,” Fair said.

But the hard work always pays off when she performs in front of her peers. As the music thumps through her body and the cheers become louder, Fair gets to show off her moves that take a very long time to perfect.

“I like memorizing dance moves and I think it’s really fun to learn. I get to show people what we’ve been working on. With dance, we spend so much time practicing and we only get to perform for a couple of minutes and show people what we’ve been working on,” Fair said.

Fair feels that she can express herself through dance and plans on continuing poms all the way to senior year.

“I think it’s fun. After a whole day of work you can get loose and learn your dance moves, like I can express and really be myself,” Fair said, laughing.