Team Feature: Schaumburg

While you’re at the mall, the dancers on Schaumburg Varsity Poms are planking.

by Norm Ramil, 8 Count Audio chief.music.officer & dance.fan

Schaumburg (the city) is known for its mall, but that’s over on the busy side of town. Far away from Ikea and Legoland is the rest of Schaumburg, including the high school and its Sizzlers Varsity Poms.

I’m not sure when else I’ll get to drop this piece of trivia, so I’ll just do it right here. My fave fun fact about Schaumburg High School? Their varsity boys basketball team circa 2005 had a kid off the bench named—wait for it—Josh Von Schaumburg.

Speaking of names, whoever came up with the name for Schaumburg High School’s dance team back in the day deserves a shout out. The poms go by the name “Sizzlers,” which sounds much better than any attempt to get cute with the school’s official nickname, “The Saxons” (the name “Saxonettes” sounds like a clarinet and saxophone decided to get together and have a kid, so…).

At a school with well-respected flag and orchesis programs, you can be sure that a decent chunk of the student population has at least a rough idea of the importance of dance. Schaumburg’s dance program specialized in pom during a pretty successful stretch in the mid-2000s. By the 2010-11 season, Schaumburg won TDI’s 3A Pom category at state. But like a lot of teams in the 2010s, the Sizzlers made a stylistic shift to jazz amidst the IHSA takeover, and they’ve performed a jazz routine for the past three years. 2015-16 was their first season with two dances—a jazz and a contemporary.

Still, they’ve got some of the old-school vibe about them, and the t-shirts they have on today display the official name of “Varsity Poms” instead of “dance team.” For halftime, homecoming, and UDA camp, this team always sticks to its traditional pom roots.

I got the chance to visit with the Sizzlers at a July afternoon practice. A legit heatwave gripped Chicagoland that week, and the hint of air conditioning inside the school definitely didn’t reach into the upstairs gym where the poms held practice. I could hear the cheerleaders practicing next door in the main gym, and I bet it wasn’t much cooler down there, either.

Coach Kristen Dolbeare is multitasking, watching her captains lead warmups while she orders an extra uniform on her laptop. Her dancers—13 of 15 are present for practice—have plenty of studio skills, while Dolbeare brings her cheer background to the table. Many of these girls have learned their dance craft at studios such as Rise, Northwest Ballet Academy, and Center Stage. Most of their middle schools also have a poms team.

By the time you read this, the team will have expanded since freshmen tryouts happen in August. Until then, Schaumburg has two seniors, four juniors, and six sophomores. All of these girls were on last year’s team, led by seven seniors. All six of last year’s freshmen are back this year.

She and Assistant Coach Caitlin Roberts walk through the formation as their team stretches through a routine led by Captains Danielle and Noelle (Amy, the third captain, isn’t here today). The bluetooth speaker pumps out a variety of tracks. After Kygo and Selena Gomez comes, maybe presciently, “All I Do Is Win,” and then Kanye’s “Stronger.” Just when I realize that it’s important to be properly stretched out in this heat to avoid injury, “Treat You Better” by Shawn Mendes comes on, and it all kinda makes sense.

The stretch session has a business-y tone until some of the girls do the obligatory hand bounce during the chorus of “All I Do Is Win.” Next, those wearing socks toss them to the side and the team does planks in a circle formation to “Hips Don’t Lie.” The cool part? They’re singing the song while planking.

After a few more warmups, the team does pirouette sets. Coach Dolbeare links one activity to another by reminding the girls that the whole point of their plank circle is to build strength, which helps the proper core position during these turns. The captains also chime in with their own feedback as the dancers execute a quad and disc combo. One of them notes that the arms and legs look fine but the torso timing is off—“At any moment I’m looking at people’s fronts and sides and backs while you guys turn.” And then there are those two ever-present reminders: spotting and pointed toes.

Captains Danielle and Noelle go over a leap combination that the team then works on. It’s easy to see why their spring tryouts require learning a dance that includes secondes and spinning discs, plus individual leaps. The three captains are in charge of harnessing all of the girls’ skills by choreographing the teams’s four or five dances throughout the season, but sometimes an outside choreographer lends some assistance to competition routines.

The routine itself is for football season, a dance they brought to camp and won with. UDA camp is the main summertime bonding experience for the Schaumburg Sizzlers. The program also teams up with the other District 211 teams to host a camp where all current dancers and incoming freshmen can hone their skills. The girls also devote time to volunteering for Feed My Starving Children and various charity runs.

A kick ripple element gets tweaked with two teammates absent, and then a formation change into a long diagonal brings its own alignment issues. Coach Dolbeare makes sure the girls put the whole formation first before their own positions. “If the girl in front of you is wrong, adjust to them—don’t leave them hanging, don’t make them look bad,” she says. Team first.

The dance got a lot of good feedback at camp, and Dolbeare wants to make sure it wows the home crowd, too. She reminds the girls to keep up their energy at the end so it matches the energy at the beginning: “Audiences can see it” when this doesn’t happen. The team is all about attention to detail, including transitions. Coach Dolbeare tells her dancers, “The run [to the next formation] is choreographed, not just casual.” And for a little more power and sharpness, she’s thinking about having them vocalize their turns.

Next up is the homecoming routine, extensively choreographed on several sheets of paper. The girls work on how one movement sets up the next, and Coach Dolbeare points out that the spinning disc will show how off they were on the turns going into it. And what if your secondes are less than 90 degrees? “Do leg lifts at home while watching Netflix,” she recommends.

We often think about musicality as knowing what to choreograph at certain parts of the music, but another aspect is the actual execution in relation to the music. The song is a little slower than ideal, so therefore these turns have to be super controlled–something that Coach Dolbeare notes as her dancers nod in agreement. Schaumburg’s wise musicality also shows up when they have a 4-count thrown in, necessary for their particular song.

That earlier rule of following the dancer in front of you pops up again: “The front person is always right, even if they’re wrong,” she proclaims. Sounds like a perfect slogan for a t-shirt. Captain Danielle also shows off her smarts by referring to some angled formations in terms of degrees. I don’t need a protractor to know that she’s right; I’m looking at a legit 60-degree angle. Both coaches are math teachers, and they commend Danielle’s linking classroom knowledge with pom formations.

But then again, dance technique is also about physical skill, and after a run-through of the whole dance, someone blurts out, “Guys, remember that an arabesque is all leg, not a forward torso tilt.”

In my mind, the Sizzlers already have their place in the roll call of state champions—2011, TDI, AAA Pom. But this team has its own goals, and they’ve already reached one of them, having won the home routine competition at camp. Next up: get to the second day at IHSA state. Somewhere in the building is a sweet-looking Team Dance Illinois state trophy, and Schaumburg’s dancers look to give it some company in that trophy case.