Editor's Note: The urge to win runs deep. But for most of modern history, athletic domination has been seen as a man’s pursuit. In recent decades, though, women’s sports have gained ground. The WNBA has been setting viewership records; revenues from women’s sports are climbing. Locally, women athletes are impressing crowds with their prowess and ingenuity — though true parity remains a distant goal. Women in Memphis are going the distance, taking flight, and smashing the competition (and no, those aren’t just metaphors). We highlight several women and teams here whose stories show that athletics aren’t just for the guys anymore. This is Part Two in a three-part package we published in our magazine in October. Other stories focused on long-distance runner Savannah Crittenden and Memphis Roller Derby.
photograph courtesy university of memphis spirit squad
University of Memphis spirit squads have earned a national reputation in the dance world.
For a few weeks, from the end of last year to the beginning of January, the volleyball gym at the University of Memphis transformed into a dance studio. Mats were taped over the court floor with the recognizable Tigers flags, and megaphones tucked to the side. Mirrors were rolled into the end of the court. The Pom Squad and Ambush Crew had been practicing their routines here, with rehearsals ramping up to nearly every day, hours at a time, in preparation for the UCA & UDA College Cheerleading and Dance Team National Championship in Orlando, January 17–19, 2025.
At one January practice before the spring semester began, I spoke with Carol Lloyd, the U of M spirit coordinator and head dance coach, as the group went through a part of their routine to be performed in only a few days. Their footsteps were sharp, measured according to counts, heads turning in unison; there was no music, but they were in sync — or so it appeared to the untrained eye.
They lifted one of their teammates in the air, effortlessly it seemed, but something was off, though they hadn’t quite figured out what, exactly. Should she adjust her leg? Should it be bent at the knee? Lloyd asked for feedback from the athletes, pointing out collaboration’s role in their process. They ran through the counts again, and again, and again, and would do so again many more times. This part was only a few seconds of an entire routine that they’d been working on since November.
“It’s so detailed,” Lloyd said. “I don’t think a lot of people realize how much goes into just dancing for this one minute and 50 seconds.”
For each championship, the Pom Squad and Ambush Crew compete in three categories: game day, hip-hop, and pom. In a game-day performance, dancers recreate the live game experience with a band, fight song, Pouncer the mascot, and lots of spirit. Pom uses poms and can be a mix of hip-hop and jazz.
Last year, the team took home the national championship for game day and placed third in hip-hop and seventh in pom. That same weekend, the university’s cheerleaders won the national championship in small coed. This year, the cheer team placed fifth, and the pom team placed fourth in hip-hop.
Winning titles isn’t unusual for the U of M’s spirit squads, which include the cheer team, the Pom Squad, and the Ambush Crew, which Lloyd started last year to specialize in hip-hop during game days and compete with the Pom Squad at nationals. The cheer team holds seven national titles. The Pom Squad, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, has 16, including nine consecutive titles from 1986 to 1994.
“It’s always harder to stay on top than it is to get there,” Lloyd said. “I always feel pressure, but pressure is a privilege almost.”
photograph courtesy memphis spirit
The first national collegiate dance team championship took place in 1986, and Memphis State, as it was then called, won — and it won for the next eight years. Lloyd, a Memphis native, cheered throughout high school and was on the college’s pom team during that champion-winning streak from 1989 to 1993. She would go on to succeed her college coach, Cheri Ganong-Robinson, in 2004.
“This sport has become so big — way more athletic, technical — so to still be one of the top teams and still keep it at that level is great,” Lloyd said.
“Memphis has been so well-known for so long as this amazing program across the nation in the dance world, so to be a part of it is absolutely amazing,” Bella Roy, a pom dancer, who graduated in the spring, added. “It’s easy to get so hard on yourself when you have all these long practices and you’re sore and think, ‘Oh, I can’t make it to my spot’ or this or that. But then the alumnae are always like, ‘Oh, you’re flipping upside down, and you’re doing 12 turns,’ and we’re like, ‘Wait, we really are good.’”
Yet neither the NCAA nor the Office of Civil Rights, which enforces Title IX, consider collegiate dance or cheer as sports, defining “sports” as activities whose purpose is competing, not “supporting” other sports on the sidelines. The spirit squads, however, very much consider themselves athletes, training hard and competing, albeit once a year. Even though they are at every football and basketball game, they’re also at community and philanthropic events because, as they would say, they’re the “face” of the university.
As it is, the spirit teams have to raise their own funds for the majority of their budget. Each year, the dancers and cheerleaders put on a golf tournament, host dance and cheer clinics, sell popcorn, offer appearances, and more.
“It takes about $120,000 to $140,000 each year to cover everything that we need,” Lloyd said. For reference, according to CNBC, U of M’s athletic program is worth about $148 million. That puts the school third in the American Athletic Conference, behind East Carolina University ($153 million) and the University of South Florida ($150 million).
The spirit squads also don’t have a dedicated facility, which can add more strain to the budget and affects efficiency. The cheer team practices at an All-Star gym in Collierville, and the Pom Squad and Ambush Crew have bounced around for the past few years, last year renting a church gym and this year using one of the university’s rec gyms until the volleyball gym opened up.
At that January practice, where 20 dancers were rehearsing the pom routine, a few who weren’t in the number joined to cheer their teammates on. This is typical, Lloyd said. “When you know that someone is struggling in a certain part, you’ve got to scream for them,” she said to her athletes. “If everybody gets in their head, start yelling. The mat talk is what’s going to help everybody.”
And so they screamed and shouted, and so did Lloyd. “This is their family,” Lloyd said, noting that out of 43 team members who were on the Pom Squad and Ambush Crew then, only four were local.
Roy, a Franklin native, competed in game day, pom, and hip-hop this year, her last year competing. Hip-hop, she said, has been the dance style that has challenged her the most but the one she’s grown the most in since her freshman year. “Everybody knows Memphis hip-hop in the college dance world, so to go out there and be a part of that is so special and fun,” she said.
The Univeristy of Memphis has consistently placed in the top four of the hip-hop division since the division started at the competition. “That first time, my freshman year, after we finished hip-hop for semis, when I did my last little smackdown and looked up, I just held my ending pose for at least 10 seconds,” Roy recalled. “It was that moment where I was just, ‘This is what I’ve dreamed of for so long. And I don’t want to leave.’ I was like, ‘I just did this.’ And then last year, that was always my lifelong goal to win a national championship. And to say that I actually did it is crazy, but it’s so worth it. Since I was little, that’s what I wanted.”
Now, as Roy, a supply chain management major, looks to life after college, she said, “Since I’ve danced for so long, I think it’s going to be hard, that transition after college, figuring out what I’m going to do with my life. It’s been school, dance, school, dance, school, dance forever, so it’s hard to imagine a life without it. But I think I’ll continue taking dance classes here and there, doing a normal job. I have found a big passion, though, in teaching dance.”
When the spirit squads traveled to Orlando for their championship, both the dance and cheer teams were on the heels of last year’s wins. They didn’t win those big national titles again, but they flew back on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the day before the semester began, knowing their season wasn’t over. They still had to perform at basketball games and other events, the spirit squads’ seasons lasting all school year.
And at the end of each practice, the dancers come together in a circle and link pinkies. “Seniors or captains will give a little wrap-up of practice,” Roy said, “just to get everybody in a good headspace before we leave, and then we say the Lord’s Prayer.” The prayer then leads into a chant: “Five, six, seven, eight, whoo, MPDTAC.”
That MPDTAC would stand for Memphis Pom Dream Team (and) Ambush Crew. And, yes, the DT stands for dream team — not the expected dance team — because, according to Lloyd, she’s always coaching the dream team, win or lose.
A version of this story was published by the Memphis Flyer in January 2025.
