Commack High students kick their way to the top

Commack’s varsity kickline team returned to town last month to a champions’ welcome: a fire department escort from the Long Island Expressway, a crowd of fans waiting at the high school, balloons and confetti when the vehicles rolled in.

From the Orlando, Florida, hotel that was the site of the 2022 National Dance Alliance championships, the Cougarettes brought home two titles in an activity that requires as much strength, endurance and pinpoint timing as any sport but is not recognized as one by NCAA or Section XI. Gabby Meyer, 18, a team captain, told Newsday that to focus on that slight was missing the point: “Of course I do think we should be considered a sport, but all the girls consider it as one. We practice just as much as any sport, if not more, and we’re hardworking — we don’t need to be considered a sport, because we know it.”

The oversight was not lost on Commack staffers, who estimate their program has amassed more than 20 national titles in 40 years, including back-to-back titles through much of the 1990s.

“We probably have one of the best kickline programs in the Northeast,” said athletic director Pat Friel, who called the dancers among the “most complete athletes” in the district.

Sachem North, Smithtown West and Syosset also won titles at the March 4-7 event. 

“They work very hard, they do a great job,” Section XI assistant director Peter Blieberg said in an interview. “It’s not recognized by the state, so we can’t turn around and make it a sport on our own.”

Chris Watson, New York State Public High School Athletic Association spokesman, wrote in an email that “to the best of my knowledge no section has ever expressed interest in making kickline a NYSPHSAA sanctioned sport.”

Kickline shares elements of performance you might see in the Rockettes or old Hollywood dance sequences: coordinated head-high kicks executed in formation, in sometimes rapid succession with interspersed turns and jumps. 

Competitive kickline complicates this template. The rule book from last year’s National Dance Alliance championship lists about 100 perilous-sounding skills, starting with aerial cartwheel and ending with windmill, a “non-airborne, nonrotating, tumbling skill in which a dancer begins on the back, spins from his/her upper back to the chest while twirling his/her legs around his/her body in a V-shape.”

With those skills the Cougarettes, 36 young women who practiced between 12 and 15 hours every week since late summer, won the kick event, centered on kick combinations and staging, and the team, which combines jazz, hip-hop, pom and kick styles. 

Head coach Alexa Armentano, a former Cougarette, said her dancers follow the same preperformance routine whether or not a championship is on the line.

“We make a team circle, link arms and I just talk to them, remind them why we’re here, why we love what we do.” She added one variation for this contest: “Think of the feeling of coming in first. ... Don’t hold back.” 

Video of the winning performance shows 20 dancers start by giving the judges what is required, with exquisitely timed kicks straight up and swiveling across the body, masterful pike holds. The fireworks come at the end: a dancer is tossed airborne. Several kicks later, everyone on stage is elevated in simultaneous split jumps. They land in full split and twist themselves upright. 

Half of this year’s team is graduating. Some, like Meyer, will dance in college. For others, Orlando was the end.

“We all squeezed each other so tight,” said captain Ashley Maikowski, 18, a dancer since she was 2 who decided the demands of the high-level programs at the colleges she is considering would be too much. “I wish I could relive it every day of my life,” she said. “I’m never going to be able to experience it again, but I’m so thankful that I got the opportunity to experience this.”