Who said lip syncing doesn’t require talent and skill?
Senior planning (Splanning) hosted the annual Puttin’ on the Hitz (POTH) on Dec. 13 in the auditorium. “Every year, senior planning hosts POTH to display some of Wootton’s finest talent in a lip syncing competition,” senior Jay Raichura said.
The MCs of the night were seniors Aaron Lazar, Jay Raichura, Joe Pohoryles and Sage Kumar. They helped run the night smoothly while introducing some puns and jokes here and there. For instance, they jokingly called the sophomores irrelevant. “They’re not babies anymore, but they’re also not upperclassman. They’re just, there, almost as forgotten as the second “O” in the word sophomores,” Lazar said.
The competition was divided by individual acts and class acts. For individual performances, first place wins $100, second place wins $50 and third place wins $25. In the case of class acts, the class who wins first place receives $100.
The night started with individual acts. The performances ranged from hip-hop to K-pop to Bollywood. One of these included the comeback of last year’s winner, sophomore Rin Sohn. This year she danced with sophomore Kelly Wang to a mix of hit songs such as ‘I Like it’ by Cardi B. Another individual act was Shayne Brook’s, where he hip hop and break-danced to Lady Gaga’s song, ‘Telephone’. “Shayne did an amazing job out there. I knew that he could dance, but he definitely exceeded my expectations when I saw him on stage,” junior Amy Kraft said.
Moving onto the class performances, the class of 2022 kicked it off with songs from artists like Elvis Presley to the popular hit of “Call my Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen. “POTH was a super fun experience to watch and choreograph and perform in. It was a bit stressful but overall it was a great time and all the acts were really cool to watch,” freshman Le Anh Metzger said.
The class of 2021, who won the class act as freshman last year, broke it down to ‘I’m The One’ by Justin Bieber and the theme song to the show ‘Arthur’. Sophomores Sohn and Wand performed in this as well. Then, the juniors jammed to Rihanna and the Beastie Boys. Junior Meghana Kotraiah said that having fun and creating unity with junior planning was more important to her than winning. “Our class has such an amazing bond and so much love for each other even if we lost, so I had a great time and POTH is one of my favorite things,” Kotraiah said.
Other school clubs were able to perform too, such as Woottonettes, poms, SGA, step team and drumline. Junior Haley Scheinberg was involved in three of the performances. “I had to perform three times with SGA, poms and Woottonettes. The preparation for it was pretty exhausting but I am very happy with how it all turned out,” Scheinberg said.
The Woottonettes danced to holiday-themed songs. They enacted the iconic ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ dance from the movie Mean Girls and went into other classics such as ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ by Mariah Carey. “Last year, we were pretty bummed when we weren’t able to perform. I’m glad we got to come back this year we all had a great time,” junior Arian Nyandjo said
Another performance for the books was the one executed by the ‘POTH Professors’, which consisted of a group of history teachers dancing to a song about Genghis Khan. Social studies Matthew Winter was all costumed-up in blue when he performed. “That was Mr. Bauer not me, blue is not a good color on me,” Winter said, deceptively.
Splanning ended the night with their dance to songs such as ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ by Shakira and ‘We Are All In This Together’ from the High School Musical soundtrack. Shortly after that, the winners were announced. Regarding the individual acts, the group who lipsynced to K-Pop named ‘Ume-lody’ got third place and another group of girls named ‘NSJ’ got second with their hip hop performance. After asking for the audience to drumroll, the MCs announced the Sohn and Wang were the first place winners in this category.
The sophomores also won first place again for class acts. “I think of the individual wins as really just completing our class of 2021 sweep. I’m so thankful for the insane numbers of people who supported us. I tried to step it up from last year with the addition of one of my best friends, and we can’t wait to come up with more ideas for next year,” Sohn said.
