By: Deasha Bent
Staff Reporter
Sacred Heart University Kickline coach Samentha Samuel has been coaching for 15 years. Starting at a high school on Long Island, she decided to continue her passion here at SHU.
“I started coming to the open houses during Columbus Day weekend, Veteran’s Day weekends, and believe or not I found that the demographics of the students that attend Sacred Heart University, are also from Long Island,” said Samuel. “Kickline is becoming more rampant and so well known in New York, but mostly Long Island, so a lot of those students stressed interest at SHU. So, it made sense to only stress interest of what was also back home.”
If you need a better image of what Kickline looks like, Samuel compared it to “the Rockettes back in New York City.”
She then went into a bit more detail about this exciting team.
“It is a culmination of high kicks, sometimes a lot jazz series or palm motions,” said Samuel.
While they may not be performing on stage in New York, they do just as an amazing job at the Pioneers men’s basketball game and plan on branching out to other sports events like football.
Since Kickline became an exciting new team on campus, the team spirit is what keeps the girls going.
“I think with team camaraderie, anything can happen,” said Samuel.
From that same high school, this year’s team captain, Senior Lauren Garizio, came to SHU hoping to bring Kickline to the field. She stressed the importance of the team’s overall spirit since it has started.
“I think our team has a really good relationship, everyone is really close. We get dinners together, we hangout outside of practice, and everyone will help each other with school work. A lot of girls here are nursing majors, so they’ll help the younger girls,” said Garizio.
While on Kickline, nobody gets left behind. According to Garizio, they’ll “work with each other one-on-one, and keep running it until it’s muscle memory.”
“We’re all so close. The first practice, we all didn’t know each other but then we all started getting to know each other and we’re kind of like sisters now,” said freshman Kaitlin Pontes when asked what her favorite aspect of Kickline was.
Pontes also believes that Kickline helps her when it’s included in her class schedule.
“It is actually really good, because sometimes when I’m not doing anything all day, I feel like I need to do something and it actually helps me,” said Pontes. “It helps having other people on the team help me with my school stuff.”
“Having other people there with you not matter what. If you’re ever going through stuff, you can always talk to them,” said Pontes.
If this has at all seemed exciting enough and the urge to get involved comes up, don’t worry! Kickline is open to all members of the SHU community. It’s just as simple as writing an email.
“I urge [students] to contact me via email. I can be reached at shukickline@gmail.com and I’ll keep you updated to when tryouts are,” said Samentha Samuel.
