The Origin of Texas Pom

Back in the ’70’s the biggest name in cheer was the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. They were more dancer than cheerleader, and they inspired Texas assistant basketball coach Barry Dowd to create the Longhorn Luvs in 1977. Dowd had been head coach at UT Arlington in Dallas for ten years and witnessed the popularity of the dance team, and he wanted that for UT basketball. The Luvs performed at home games, and were coached by former Texas Cheer squad member Terry Stewart.

In 1982 the Luvs were reinvented as the Texas Stars and coached by Barbara Loomis, who had sponsored the dance teams at two Austin area high schools. The Stars got their name from a previous UT organization that existed in the 1950s and early ‘60s as a baton twirling team that performed at football games and eventually became a part of Longhorn Band.

I was a cheerleader alongside the Stars for two years, but we did not work together. As a dance squad I thought they were very good. It was a bit of a mystery in those days why we never teamed up. The Stars were a unit unto themselves, and only made appearances at men’s basketball games and were rarely part of other spirit events. I am happy to report that The Stars and The Cheerleaders worked together on the very first Extravaganza in 1987.

Photo: The original Longhorn Luvs from 1977, including Coach Dowd’s daughter.

In the fall of 1988 Texas Cheer’s first coach Loyce Bates-Dettman was pregnant and realized she needed help. “I had two cheer squads: one for football and the other for volleyball and basketball.” For Loyce, coaching was a part time job, and full time she was a counselor and Director of Guidance for Eanes School District in Westlake. With a child coming in the spring, Loyce did not have time to do it all.

Photo: The Texas Stars perform at halftime in 1982.

Photo: Coach Bates-Dettman with the 1986 cheer squad.

And right on cue, Loyce’s husband was watching a local TV news story featuring a contestant in the upcoming Crystal Light Aerobics National Championships. He said ‘Loyce come look. There’s a Sport Court in the story.’ (Sport Court was her husband’s company). But Loyce wasn’t looking at the court, she was mesmerized by the story subject: Betty Cunningham. Upon discovering that Betty had been a Kilgore Rangerette and a cheerleader at the University of Tulsa, Loyce had found her perfect assistant.

Photo: First Pom Tryout Poster

During the day, Betty was a CPA for a mortgage bank, but at night she was teaching aerobics, and then she tried out for this national championship, which opened a new door. Suddenly, Betty was in charge of a bunch of basketball cheerleaders.

And then it happened. “We were in Dallas for the Southwest Conference Basketball Championship tournament and we were playing Arkansas. They had a great united look. They had the cheer and the pom squads in the same uniforms and they were synchronized and together,” Betty recalls. Meanwhile, Texas had Cheer and the Stars, but the two squads did not mix. “DeLoss Dodds (legendary UT Athletic Director) called me up into the stands after the game and said, ‘We want that look.’ The next thing I knew the Texas Stars were disbanded and we were holding a Pom tryout.” It was spring 1989.

Kandace Cobb Williamson was on the basketball squad when she was approached by Loyce to try out for the new Pom squad. “I was better suited for Pom, and really liked the dance part” Kandace recalls. Stacey Redford Thorp and Alisa Manning Peppers were the other cheerleaders who made the jump. Twelve girls won a spot on that first squad, with three alternates chosen in the fall. Betty said “A lot of the girls that were on the Stars tried out, and several of them made it… they were great!”

“Betty jumped in with both feet,” Kandace reports. “All we knew was that she was the Aerobics 2nd place National Champion.” During the summer break, Betty was mailing personal notes (in an envelope with a stamp) to each member with suggestions for staying fit and trim. Kandace shared her copy of the official Pom Workout and weightlifting routine, along with the 9am to 9pm work week schedules and the 8-page Texas Pom Constitution (required of all student organizations).

The first days of Pom were filled with creating a whole new discipline. “We were really into the choreography,” Kandace remembers. Pom combined dance, cheer jumps, and UT tradition, wrapped up in a new package. “There was a good mix of former cheerleaders, former Stars…we had some high-kicking Kilgore Rangerettes. The Stars’ choreography was more lyrical… we were all different. We needed to blend.”

On top of all that, there was the new part of figuring out how Cheer and Pom would work together. “It was really important to have cohesion between us” Kandace noted. They tried several different ideas in a hit or miss fashion, and then found they could all do Wabash together. And for the first time, “we started working with the mascot and incorporating him into routines.” The sky was the limit in those days and it was a race to create something that would last.

Photo: The Founding Members of Texas Pom 1989-90 including three alternates

Photo: The first Texas Pom routine was created for cheer camp and became the crowd favorite at basketball games.

“Our first routine was set to ‘Bust A Move,’ and we wore it out,” Kandace boasts. It was a crowd pleaser at basketball games, so they did it all the time. “I can probably still do the routine,” Kandace smiles. (I suggest a dance-off at the next reunion.)

In the first football game in the fall of ‘89 there was the question of where to stand in the stadium, and they came up with the answer: move to a different section each quarter. This new idea was very democratic, and became even more useful later on when a second cheer squad was invented.

But not all was well in Texas Spirit Land. “At the beginning, it was a little bit weird because Pom was getting a lot of attention,” Kandace says carefully. “The newspapers and TV were doing stories. Plus, we had the squad poster and Cheer didn’t.”

Betty pulls out the Texas Pom poster, which is showing it’s age. The squad is posed with their trophy from the 1990 UCA National Championship. “Loyce and I took both Cheer and Pom to the championships, which was very unusual to qualify two squads, and they both finished in the top 5!” Kandace gushes “We were really happy to get 4th place! We decided early on that we were going to compete for nationals, so we worked hard.”

In it’s first year Texas Pom proved itself to be in the upper stratosphere of a brand new discipline at the 40 Acres, and today Kandace says Pom is still doing some of the things they invented in 1989.

Photo: 1990 Pom squad posing with UCA National Chapionship trophy.