Back in the day in Lakewood,

I got hazed on Colfax, helped embarrass Cherry Creek, and made friends for life.

In the 80s, growing up in Lakewood, THE west-side suburb of Denver, Colorado, seventh graders took field trips to Red Rocks and Rocky Flats, and high school initiation rituals on West Colfax, were way worse than ‘Dazed and Confused’.

Hoping to make the pom squad, (cheerleaders who perform to music at halftime) I'd worked incredibly hard on my individual routine, choreographed to Billy Idol's; "Dancing with Myself".

Judging would be in categories of:

• group routine

• individual routine

• jumps & kicks

• school spirit,

• splits & overall flexibility,

  
  

The week following try-outs, prospective poms went to bed in cute new pajamas, anxiously hoping to be abducted during the night.

Then, around 4am on a Thursday it happened.

My parents laughed and took pictures from the front porch, as a pack of older girls bust into my room, grabbed me from a dead sleep, and rushed me into the hard bed of a pickup. A few other initiates were already there shivering in the pre-dawn cold, but we grinned at each other with relief, knowing we'd made the Lakewood High School Pom Squad.

A couple of stops later to snatch a few more, and our captors lined us up in a Safeway parking lot, taking turns one by one, voraciously smearing us with:

• honey,

• oatmeal,

• baby oil,

• molasses,

• eggs,

• flour,

• and anything else they could think of.

It was disgusting, but we had to just stand there and take it, while seniors cracked eggs over our heads, followed by a heavy pour of baby powder, turning hair into sloppy raw ropes of dripping slime, covering necks, backs, and shoulders with itchy nastiness.

Wearing homemade sandwich-board signs written with phrases like:

"I'm a Lakewood Rah-Rah!"

or

"Honk to Make Me Cheer!"

we were marched through traffic onto the medians of Kipling and West Colfax, and forced to do high kicks and dance sequences for early-morning commuters who couldn't stop honking.

By lucky chance, I was a pom during the legendary 1985 season, when Lakewood played Cherry Creek in the (largest at the time) 4A State Championship Football game - a matchup dubbed 'David vs. Goliath'.

Cherry Creek was the heavy-favorite; a huge school from the rich part of town, versus the Lakewood Tigers, an undersized blue-collar team listing just twenty-seven guys on the roster, many playing both sides of the ball.

Our super-cool gym teacher, George Squires, was Lakewood's Head Coach, and it was a miracle the “Tenacious Tigers” had even made it to the big game, overcoming seriously tough opponents along the way, in large part I think due to the popular Survivor song:"Eye of the Tiger" which got played incessantly at pep rallies, banquets, and to rile up the boys locker room.

The morning of the championship game we woke to bitter five degree weather, and snowdrifts covering CU Boulder’s Folsom Field.

Because of their stronger record, the Bruins had earned homefield advantage, meaning halftime was Cherry Creek's, while the 'visiting' Tigers were given the opportunity to perform before the game.

With snow past our ankles, freezing in leggings and short skirts, our cool-as-shit pom squad knocked out our best competition routine, (which by that time had been rehearsed well over a hundred times) to Steve Miller's ‘Jungle Love’, causing the amped up Lakewood crowd to go wild in the stands.

Then all of a sudden it was halftime - and the Tigers were up 31-0 (!)

WHAT?!

The underdogs came to PLAY -

Mark Robinson, Gary Vigil, Quinn Cochran, Brett Quigley, Terry Elliot, Darren Muilenburg, Jimmy Cluck, Doug King, and John Metcalf (to name just a few of the standouts) DOMINATED the favored Creek team, sending them to the locker room after two quarters with zero points, and one of their star players ejected for bad sportsmanship, resulting in local sportscaster, Tom Green’s comment:

"It's one thing to lose, it's another thing to lose your cool."

And then the lame Cherry Creek poms decided it was too cold, (and likely they were losing too badly) so instead of providing any kind of halftime entertainment, they just sat it out under blankets.

With nothing happening on the field, our Lakewood squad wasted no time resetting the music, and lining up to face the opposing side's bleachers - the ultimate DIS performing for another team's crowd - and we embarrassed their poms by showing we weren't afraid of falling in a little snow for our perfectly sequenced roll-offs and transitions on icy hashmarks.

The day was ours, and those beloved boys I'd known since junior high, had just made Colorado history, taking down the powerhouse of the state, (final score: 47-8) and making us forever proud to be a Lakewood Tiger.

After Lakewood destroys Cherry Creek, Vaughn Laudner, Jeff Brito, Gary Greenwald, and other unidentified players carry victorious Coach Squires off the field.

I keep in touch with many of them, and it really does seem like yesterday we ran those suburban streets blasting Van Halen and The Violent Femmes , on our way to Holbrook Park, with twelve-packs of Coors Lights, and spiked slurpees.

So in these strange, disconnected days, I'm extremely grateful to still have so many Lakewood True Blues.

Starting of course with:

• Jules - the hardest working girl in all of Washington (green balls and Cheeley Camp forever)

  
  

• Jeanne - love you like a sister (Rupert's brunches and mimosa dreams)

  
  

• Greg - the hardest working guy in Costa Rica (Thank you for somehow giving me the best Beatles birthday wishes every year of my life since 8th grade. You are truly amazing!)

  
  

• Chuck - the fastest talkin', smoothest sellin', absolute nicest person in all the world (Don't forget: I taught you how to ski - even though it was in jeans.)

  
  

• Joe - Made me forever better when you played NWA in the tunnel of South Lakewood Elementary, and my most cherished Bowie and Beasties consort. (Nothing but love since Ms. Meyer's second grade, and Riggs' fresh fruit and vegetable breaks.)

  
  

• Jean - the most hilariously cool chick I know, and one of the strongest (shrooms and volleyball marathons, Stones and wet eye forever!)

  
  

• Sasha - Flashdance & field studies, solos & Sanibel (thanks for giving me the best advice of my life when I needed it the most)

  
  

• Tammie - a friend from the get, through broken bottles and broken hearts, sleeping bags and slurpees (No worries girl, you got this.)

  
  

• Kimmy - the kindest, cutest, most creative person I know, (and without even trying, putting us all to shame)

  
  

• Quinn - the smartest, most loyal friend anyone could ever have, (guaranteed the first person to call in an emergency, or for advice in general)

  
  

• Dave - sweet Dave, the first boy who ever gave me flowers, (thanks for making me veggie green chili, and for letting me listen to the entire Diver Down album over the phone whenever I asked - you da' best)

Yeah, Lakewood was a great place to grow up:

• doing the limbo at Roller City,

• hangin' out all day at Villa Italia Mall,

• walking to Showbiz Pizza Parlour after

• leaving the Mann Theater Six on Union

• graduation ceremonies at Red Rocks, as well as our first concerts, (back when you could just walk-in and camp overnight to claim general admission seating)

*Shout out to Brad Hunt for scoring those front row seats to my first show ever, as The Kinks wisely said through song:

"Girls will be boys and boys will be girls / It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world" so "Come dancing, it's only natural."