Student News Desk: Lincoln High Pomalinks celebrate 50 years of dance

February 20, 2025

Lincoln Public Schools understands the importance of quality journalism to help inform our community and shine a light on the people, programs and events that make our school district unique. Student News Desk is our ongoing effort to promote excellence in journalism and public education. We select a story written by student journalists from our high school publications classes to be featured on the Lincoln Public Schools homepage and social media each month. Congratulations to Cayla Bailey of Lincoln High for being selected for February!

Written by Cayla Bailey, Lincoln High

Though Lincoln High has been around for over 150 years, we’ve only had a dance team in the last 50. The Pomalinks perform multiple dance styles such as jazz, pom, kick, and hip hop. You can primarily watch them perform at LHS’s Varsity sporting events. The current and past Pomalinks celebrated their 50th anniversary as a dance team on January 24 with a banquet.

Freshman Eloise is the newest and only freshman Pomalink this year. She has been doing dance for about 10 years and was inspired to join the Pomalinks because she wanted more dance experience and this was the perfect opportunity to get it. Eloise thinks it’s really special to join in the 50th year and be able to practice with the alumni. Her favorite part about being on the Pomalinks is the people and dancing at sporting events.

Michaela Wubbels joined the team as a coach this year and has a lot of experience with dance. She’s trained in many different styles and even was on the Pomalinks! Wubbels has also danced on a competitive dance team at her studio. Wubbels decided to become the coach of the Pomalinks because she was on the team throughout high school and has experience teaching dance outside of school; it was the natural choice to couch.

She didn’t originally know it was the 50th year when she started coaching until a parent reached out to her and said she would like to help do an alumni dance. She says it was “very cool” to coach during the 50th year and bring everyone together to do the alumni dance. Wubbels’ favorite part about coaching the Pomalinks is getting closer to students.

But before Wubbels, the dance coach was Emily Martinez who coached for six years. She started dancing when she was three at Hart Dance Academy, started assisting at 12, started teaching at 15, became a Pomalink here, and then got offered a scholarship at UNK for dance.

Martinez thinks the 50th anniversary is awesome as she knew so many people throughout her life that were Pomalinks such as her dance teacher at Hart. She loves how coaching creates so many bonds with students since they get to know each other very well.

Martinez also added how proud she is of the Pomalinks in how far they’ve come seeing as they’ve been so many things such as the pep group and color guard. She’d also like to add that many people don’t realize that our dance team has been nationally ranked, been to Universal Studios for dancing competitions, and danced at bowl games.

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