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Facing the camera, Mr. James Cox smiles and walks away from the cheering crowd after his performance. Mr. Cox purchased his costume from Amazon and wore a borrowed jacket from his girlfriend for the performance. “For this song, luckily half of it was one word, so I didn’t put too much effort into memorizing the song this time, I knew it’d more of a visual performance,” Mr. Cox said.
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In a blinfolded stunt, Doris Peng ’28 and Annabel Lu ’27 are lifted by their fellow SunDancers. The SunDancers performed their exhibition showcase dance at the pep rally. “The team was excited to perform this piece for the school as we’ve worked really hard on it,” Paige Chien ’27 said.
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Pointing at the cheering crowd, Ms. Natalie Fischbach lip-syncs to ‘Shake It Off’ by Taylor Swift. Ms. Fischbach has performed to a Taylor Swift song at this annual pep rally for the last 3 years.
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With wide smiles, the cheer team performs their final stunt of the routine. The cheer team opened the first pep rally of the semester with a fun routine to a mashup that included ‘Super Bass’ by Nicki Minaj.
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Spotting the camera, Ms. Natalie Fischbach turns while singing into her gold microphone. Ms. Fischbach takes out the same gold microphone at her annual lip sync to Taylor Swift.
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With hands up after his performance, Mr. James Cox hypes up the crowd. Mr. Cox was the first teacher to participate in the staff lip sync battle. “I [decided to] lip sync to the song ‘FE!N’ by Travis Scott,” Mr. Cox said.
Gasps erupt throughout the gym as a rehearsed fight breaks out between the K-Pop Club members during their performance at the first pep rally of the semester on Friday, Feb. 6. With four lip sync performances from staff members, the pep rally displayed pop hits and hip-hop tracks.
After a routine from the cheer team, pep rally host Travis Dalrymple invited captains from sports like basketball, golf, soccer, and softball to the floor to discuss upcoming game schedules and hype up the crowd.
“The varsity girls have been undefeated this season, and we’ve been performing really well,” varsity golf co-captain Nancy Lu ‘27 said. “[The pep rally] was especially fun because we got to promote our tournament, which we don’t really get to do [usually].”
Then, the nationally known SunDancers performed their exhibition piece: a blindfolded dance with impressive holds, aerial flips, and synchronization. Next, the staff lip sync performances kicked off with Math teacher James Cox in a purple costume and green staff topped with a dollar sign, performing to FE!N by Travis Scott.
“[The song] was recommended by my former student, Emily [Xue ‘27],” Mr. Cox said. “I got this cheap costume on Amazon and a few days later it came to me. I realized I never want to reuse the costume because it’s kind of boring, so I thought a good way to get rid of the hat and cane is to just throw it into the audience.”
Performing second, English teacher Iliana Romero performed to I Just Might by Bruno Mars in a green suit and white headband, matching Mars’ costume in the song’s music video. Following this performance was Assistant Principal (AP) Amber Linz, who lip-synced to We Don’t Talk About Bruno from the popular Disney movie Encanto. Ms. Linz held cutouts of different characters in the song to her face while performing.
“It was fun to see Ms. Linz performing this year,” Naomi Kini ‘27 said. “She’s my AP so it was cool to see her outside the office. I thought her performance was good, and the face cutouts of the characters was interesting and different.”
As the penultimate performance, Chemistry teacher Natalie Fischbach performed to Shake It Off by Taylor Swift. For the past three years, Ms. Fischbach has lip-synced to Swift, making it a tradition at the annual lip sync battle. During her lip sync, she sported a number 13 jersey, referring to Swift’s favorite number, and sang into a gold microphone.
“I’ve gone to the lip sync battle pep rally every year and always like to see Ms. Fischbach’s performance,” Aditi Kodali ‘27 said. “You can tell she’s a Swiftie because she always performs to one of her songs, and every year she always brings out that gold microphone.”
Ending the pep rally and lip sync battle, K-Pop Club performed to Rich Man by aespa alongside History teacher Misty Matthews, Social Studies teacher and club sponsor Melanie Trembley, and Special Education teacher Sheri Smith. The performance ended with a rehearsed slap between the K-Pop Club members. The teachers acted as mediators to break up the fight, and as club members ran off the floor, a beat drop switched the scene to Gangnam Style. Donning black sunglasses, the teachers performed the iconic horse-riding dance.
“During our planning we decided it would be more fun to create an incident where a fight would start,” K-Pop Club Social Media Manager Jaelin Jun ‘28 said. “Then we would play Gangnam Style after that. We scheduled practices after school for two weeks, and we [were] learning choreo, cleaning the dance, and teaching the teachers their lyrics.”
The lip sync battle has now become a tradition, and is a pep rally that many students look forward to. This pep rally was an opportunity for teachers to show off their personality and creativity, connecting with students outside of the classroom.
“I love that the lip sync battle was the first [pep rally] of the semester,” Juha Hwang ‘26 said. “All the performances were fun to watch and I always look forward to it.”
