Kurt Audett

Last Month on November 9, 2023, the Senior and Junior ladies took on Friday night lights at the Tahoma High School stadium for an epic showdown of flag football.

Meanwhile, attendees enjoyed plenty of sideline entertainment from the Bear Boys, dazzling in their pink tutus, boasting enthusiastic cheers and impressive groove.

It takes a lot of preparation, cooperation and guts to pull this off, so let’s dive more in depth into the behind the scenes of Powder Puff 2023.

Sports medicine teacher, Mr. Torell, helped assist in coaching the male cheer squad, and he offers his personal insights on the value this event presents to Tahoma:

“It’s a time for the senior and junior girls to bond over sports together. It’s also a time for students to come hangout as well as supporting the girls playing flag football,” Torell explains.

With such a highly populated school, it can become difficult to unify the student body for events like this. For the girls and boys during their time preparing for game day, not only did they have lots of fun, but they also had the opportunity to learn the value of teamwork.

In a sport like football or cheerleading where you are constantly making quick-thinking decisions under pressure, you must be willing to put trust in others.

Throughout bear boys practices, held every Wednesday from October 4 to November 8, there were some issues that came into play.

Most problems that Mr. Torell expressed was the conflicting schedules from a lot of members; whether if it was work, DECA, or other sports, this altogether led to some inconsistencies with punctuality.

When it comes to directing a team, especially one full of energetic head strong teenagers, coaching challenges are bound to arise.

He stated, “the other struggle is the attention span of the boys sometimes during practice. They get so excited to hang out with one another that they get distracted pretty easily.”  This goes to show that in most cases, in order to work as one, you must put in the work yourself as well.

In spite of some rehearsal nights ending in frustration, the boys persevered, continuing to really lock themselves in over those last few practices, which obviously paid off when we saw them at Thursday nights game.

As the girls hustled in a friendly yet intense match of flag football, the Bear Boys rocked it out in style on the sideline with passionate cheerful spirits, along with delivering a spectacular performance during halftime where they danced their hearts out to classic hits from Britney Spears, Jason Derulo, Ice Spice, Katy Parry, Kesha, and Rihanna. Then closing out the routine with high flying tumbling skills.

In Torell’s mind, “this year the halftime show was great! Especially with the music cutting out multiple times or you could barely hear it. So I feel like the boys didn’t really get to fully enjoy it.”

Powder Puff and Bear Boys this year was definitely one for the books. It is always such an incredibly memorable experience that only comes around once during the first half of the school year.

As a Senior myself who participated in Powder Puff, I would recommend for you to give it a try or least attend the game because that is also when you can truly see our “Tahoma Spirit.”