Staff members "Wannabe" winners of Pep Rally Lip-Sync Battle

On Friday, Oct. 21, Samo hosted a pep rally as a part of the Homecoming experience, this time featuring a staff lip-sync battle. With songs ranging from “Baby” by Justin Bieber to “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice, teachers, security guards and other staff members put on their costumes and mouthed along to some of their favorite songs.

As done in past years, teachers picked a song alone or with the help of other teachers, students and staff members and danced their hearts out. After each performance, the students in the crowds gave a rating from one through five based on their quality and entertainment value. These scores were tallied up, leading to a first place winner of Ramsey Lambert who performed “Baby” by Justin Bieber. 

In total there were 12 performances, the first being ABBA’s song “Dancing Queen” performed by Marae Cruce, Tristan Komlos, Jose Cuevas, Satinder Hawkins and Heather Medrano. Ready to go with the classic 70’s clothes of the ABBA cast, fake instruments and even wigs to really embody the band, these staff members kicked off the battle with some groovy tunes.

Competing with this all-teacher performance were the acts with teachers and students alike, such as “Titi Me Pregunto” by Bad Bunny performed by Security Guard Natalie Cornejo and a band of students carrying towels and beach balls and even dressed as sharks. Another staff and student performance was that of Jenny Nicolas and a group of students dancing to “La Boda Del Huitlacoche” by Carin Leon. Yet another quite popular performance was Lily Sheahan and Samo’s Pom team dancing to “7 Rings” by Ariana Grande. As the coach of the Pom team, Sheahan was able to work with the team and put together a dance to this song where she could incorporate her own dancing talents as well. 

Not only were staff and students performing in this battle, but so were kids that did not even attend Samo. Performing as the Schuyler sisters in the song “Schuyler Sisters” by Lin Manuel Miranda, Amy Chapman along with Maggie Colburn and Emily Anderson brought along outfits, props and even another actor to make this performance stand out. This extra actor was Chapman’s young son, Ryan Chapman, who played the role of Aaron Burr. Not only did he dance in the choreography and dress the part, but he also had his own lines to lip-sync to by himself. Chapman herself, while nervous beforehand, had a great time as soon as she started lip-syncing.

“I always love it,” Chapman said.

In contrast, some teachers stuck to the acts by themselves such as Wilma Iniguez and Jenny Nicolas who danced away to “Mamiii” by Karol G or Tenesha Maisitis who threw cash in the air as she danced to Bruno Mars and Silk Sonic. Some teachers, while unaccompanied by a student group, danced in a group with other staff like the performance by Lizzie Stapleton, Jenny Forster, Jessica Gutierrez and Jay Daglis who pulled out their British personas and feminism and lip-synced along to “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls.

Although all these performances were cheered on by the students, the fan-favorite was “Baby” by Justin Bieber, performed by Lambert. Bringing back an all time favorite 2000s song, Lambert won over the crowd with the signature hair swoop and outfit of the famous Justin Bieber, becoming the embodiment of young JB himself.

“Once the song started playing and I already heard the student body getting into it, that energy really just kind of flowed and made me not stress about it because we were all just having a good time already, let’s just keep it going,” Lambert said.

Finally, there was a performance by Randy Denis lip-syncing “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice. As a play on the old and joked-about Vanilla Ice, Denis came out on a wheelchair and was consistently aided by fellow teacher Simon Heerdegen in order to continue to perform as he suffered from “setbacks” such as running out of oxygen, not being able to stand up and “soiling his pants”. While Denis did not think that the audience would take the conclusion that he was disabled, many students were confused by this and the performance was not quite the hit that “Baby” was, although he admits he knew it was a flop from the minute he came out on stage. However, Denis remains positive and looks forward to more performances now that he knows his audience a bit better. 

“I get a kick out of performing in front of large crowds,” Denis said.

Overall, the lip-sync battle hosted many interesting performances from through the decades and performed by staff, students and children alike. This experience brought Samo together once more in a pep rally in anticipation of the upcoming homecoming game and dance. Many students felt this way, including Phoebe Benun (’25). 

“I had fun seeing a new side of my teachers that day as they were given a chance to be creative and have fun with all the students,” Benun said.