Jennifer Black

1989 was the first year of Texas Pom and freshman Jennifer Black had a burning desire to make the squad. Jennifer had been on high school dance team in San Antonio, and she knew making the UT squad was a long shot.

“I did not make it past the first round,” Jennifer admits with a laugh. “But I was not going to give up.” Jennifer practiced Texas Fight every single day after that, determined to work her way onto the squad. She watched that first Texas Pom season very closely from the bleachers. She also watched the dancers from the popular TV show In Living Color, which featured a street style of dancing to a new thing called Hip Hop.

When the 1990 Pom tryout finally came around, Jennifer made it to the finals, and then forgot her entire solo routine. “But I nailed the interview!” Jennifer laughs again. There was, however, a silver lining: there would be another tryout in the fall to pick three alternates. Jennifer confidently told Coach Betty Cunningham she was determined to make the squad.

Jennifer started running every day, which she had never done before, and practiced so as to never forget again. That’s when she had a dream where Coach Cunningham named her to the squad. One week later Coach called to inform her that one of the new members didn’t make the requisite GPA and Jennifer had been picked to take her place. “It’s a good thing I was doing all that running and practicing” Jennifer says,”because I would not have been ready for the hard work to come.”

In two seasons on Pom Jennifer learned some powerful life lessons: relentless pursuit of excellence, never stop working and improving, and never give up. According to squad mate Kandace Williams, Jennifer was the face of Texas Pom. “I loved Pom, absolutely loved it” Jennifer admits.

Jennifer graduated with an education degree and became a high school english teacher in San Antonio. But after two years she was not satisfied with her career, so she spent the next two years working a marketing job to pay for her LSAT training course and was accepted into UT Law School in the Fall of 1996. Jennifer had made really good grades at UT partly because “the time commitment on Pom made me very organized.”

Jennifer’s Pom lessons turned up when she joined the UT Mock Trial team that never dropped a single ballot, and never lost a round, eventually winning the State Championship in the Fall of ’98 and the National Championship in the spring.

When interviewing with law firms after graduation, Jennifer realized her Pom experience was more important than Mock Trial. “Everyone saw Pom on my resume and were always very impressed and wanted to talk about it.” After practicing law for a while she realized teaching was more demanding, and running a classroom was very similar to being a trial lawyer where she represented victims of mesothelioma.

These days Jennifer is Managing Partner of her firm in Houston, but misses her days in the courtroom teaching a jury. She has two daughters; Sophia just graduated from UT, and Ava will be a Sophomore at UT - Momma is very proud!

Jennifer was our guest speaker for last year’s summer cheer week, and her personal story of working hard and never giving up on her dream reached the squad like no other, inspiring the kids to adopt her desire for relentless pursuit of excellence. “With Texas Spirit, you are lifting other people up. And then you do that the rest of your life.”

You can watch Jennifer’s guest speaker speech and her incredible climbing Kilimanjaro story on our Texas Cheer and Pom YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@TexasCheerandPomAlumni