The gym floor vibrating with the beat of the heavy percussion of pop music hits echoed during the teacher lip-synch battle at the pep rally on Friday, Jan. 31 in the field house gym.

The first pep rally of the second semester kicked off the new calendar year with the classic synchronized routines from the Warrior Pride Dance Team, SunDancers, and Warrior Band, with these movements designed to hype up and welcome the students. Commencing the pep rally, pep rally host Mr. Travis Dalrymple worked to increase school spirit in the gymnasium with chants. Deeming the school spirit as unsatisfactory, he called on audience member Charlie Hui ‘26 to lead the chant. This moment brought a sense of lightheartedness to the pep rally, and garnered laughter from the audience.

“I knew Dalrymple because he was my coach freshman year for JV Tennis,” Hui said. “After freshman year, I only really talked to him whenever we passed the hallway so it made the pep rally experience all the more shocking. 

After Mr. Dalrymple’s school spirit chants, Cheer and the SunDancers both performed their respective prepared routines. Cheer’s routine was filled with Westwood-specific chants while the SunDancers performed an eerie interpretative dance, dubbed Mood Swings. This performance was inspired by the day-to-day struggles of getting through life, and being stuck and immersed in your own head and emotions. Their haunting performance left the audience speechless.

“It was such a short amount of time that we had to prepare it,” SunDancer Elliott Richards ‘26 said. “It’s also a super hard piece. [There’s] a lot of really hard moves. It definitely came together, but it was hard to bring it all together in such a short amount of time.”

After the SunDancers’ routine, it was time for the highlight of this pep rally: the teacher lip-synch battle. The first performance started off the competition with a bang; Coach Brissa Ochoa performed Let It Go from the movie Frozen. This performance roused the audience, especially when Coach Ochoa brought in Coach Lanea Meyers to blow puffs of white powder to resemble snow around Coach Ochoa. Students united to assist in the show by performing karaoke. The next performance was by Ms. Melanie Trembley, who danced to Super Shy by NewJeans. Garnering cheers from the audience, she brought members of K-Pop Club, who she sponsors, to dance with her on the floor as she lip-synched. She adopted a shy persona to reflect the song.

“I think they should turn up the music,” Emily Xue ‘27 said. “Everybody is embarrassed to sing along, but if you turn up the music, nobody’s embarrassed.”

The third performance was by Mr. James Cox. Sporting a brown wig and mustache – reminiscent of hit artist Benson Boone – Mr. Cox lip-synched to Beautiful Things by Benson Boone in a green alligator onesie. He did a knee-slide twice in his performance, getting loud karaoke from the audience as the crowd waved their phone flashlights. The final performance of the pep rally was from Assistant Principal Ms. Amber Linz, who lip-synched to Birds of a Feather by Billie Eilish. Ms. Linz donned a baggy outfit that resembled the artist’s fashion style, and performed while moving around on a rolling chair, similar to the official music video for Birds of a Feather.

“Surprisingly, as soon as I got [onstage], I stopped being nervous,” Mr. Cox said. “I was like ‘this will be fine’. I was really nervous when I first said yes last week. Then I practiced, I got the stuff, and then it went away. I knew the Benson Boone guy had the brown curly hair, so I was like ‘gotta get the wig’.” 

Overall, the pep rally hyped up students and eased them into a new semester. Whether it was during the lip-synch battle, the SunDancers’ performance, or the Cheer performance, the gymnasium was filled with school spirit.

“Before [Mr. Dalrymple] called me, I was reflecting on the English quiz I just took and stressing so my head wasn’t really in the gym,” Hui said. “But after being called, I forgot about the stress and just had a blast yelling my heart out.”