This Friday’s Shelton High School football game is one that many at the school have waited for their entire high school careers.
It’s Senior Night, the night the school’s athletes will be recognized and honored on the school’s football field during the game against Amity Regional High School.
But senior members of the girl’s Pom Pon team won’t be among those called on the field because as of now, there is no team. And that, members say, is devastating.
The team was temporarily disbanded in September, because it was lacking an adviser to oversee it.
The Board of Education is about to advertise again for a high school pom pon adviser, board chairman Tim Walsh said Wednesday, and hopes to have someone in the position by mid-November.
But that didn’t make many of the team members and their parents happy Wednesday at the board’s monthly meeting.
“It’s devastating and it’s disappointing,” said senior team member Paige Colon, who left the meeting in tears despite the board’s announcement that the job is about to be posted.
“Since May they have kept saying for us to wait another 10 days,” she said. “It’s incredible how people we are supposed to look up to and we pay for with our taxes can’t accomplish this.”
The board will accomplish it, Walsh said. “The pom pon position will be posted immediately,” he said.
The job must be advertised for 10 days before the board can take action, he said. “We hope by mid-November an individual will be appointed to the position.”
Since 1969 the team has appeared at half-time during games in a wide variety of sports, but especially at football games.
The situation has enraged team members, especially seniors like Colon who will be graduating in June.
For the last couple of years she has looked forward to Senior Night when she and her other senior teammates will be singled out for their participation on the team, she said, but now that won’t happen.
The district advertised for a Pom Pon adviser in July but no one who responded to that posting was suitable for the job, school officials said. The job is a paid stipend position and the responsibilities include monitoring team member’s academic performance, coordinating performance dates, keeping track of inventory and helping with fundraising for the team.
Team members and their parents question how there could not have been one qualified applicant.
“We need to get this nonsense over with and get the girls out in the field,” Paige’s mother Joan Colon told the school board. “This 10-day posting is heartbreaking.”
That’s because the football season is fast approaching completion — the last games are played on Thanksgiving day. And it’s especially urgent since Friday is Senior Night.
“There is no reason why these girls can’t be on the field Friday night and be recognized,” Joan Colon said. “It is a mockery to the town.”
Several suggested that the board make a temporary appointment during Wednesday’s meeting to get the girls back in action immediately. But the board declined to do that.
Beth Zacharias Salito, a SHS graduate and former pom pon team member, volunteered her services and that of her business, the Dance Workshop in Monroe.
“They have done nothing wrong but they are being punished,” she said.
