The lights were dim as the crowd whispers in the silent auditorium. Audience members shift in their seats as the first group struts on stage. A small group of Battle students begins their synchronized dance moves and lip-syncing after practicing for weeks on end. For many CoMo Cow participants, it takes weeks in advance to practice choreography, costume changes, and lipsyncing! The night was full of unexpected twists and the cow puns were just one twist!

When coming to CoMo Cow, first-year attendees don’t know what to expect. Second-year attendee Bri Nguyen, sophomore, talks about what it’s like to see her peers onstage, “Last year, I walked into it not really knowing what to expect but it’s so much fun and you get to really get involved. It’s crazy going to the same school with people and not knowing that they’re so much fun and seeing them up there not caring what other people think is such a fun experience.”

This year’s host of the CoMo Cow was Rock Bridge. People ordered tickets between lunch shifts to guarantee a spot for April 3rd. CoMo Cow gives students the opportunity to have fun and raise money for a local charity of the host’s choosing. The Student Council sponsored the event is prepared months in advance by testing lighting, getting teams to sign up, and picking a charity. All proceeds from tickets and shirts went to the Children’s Grove.

Student council sponsor Jill Villasana talked about how the Golden Cow dated back to the 1990s. “RAMS (Rocking Against Multiple Sclerosis) is an organization at the University of Missouri and their big event was a lip-syncing competition. They had an outreach group that worked with the high schools to develop a high school lip-sync competition between Hickman and Rock Bridge. They (RAMS) named it the Golden Cow based on the biblical story from the Old Testament about the creation of a golden calf and worshipping false idols and gold was the common color between Rock Bridge and Hickman. The organization named it the Golden Cow because the lip sync competition featured false idols that neither wrote nor sang the music that they were performing onstage.”

Battle brought three competing teams to the stage this year: Battle Step, the Babe Bunch, and Seasons of Love. Two being student-led teams: Battle Step and the Babe Bunch and a new addition of a teacher-led team. The step team was the first to come on the stage and as an opener. The Babe Bunch had returning Eliyah McCarthy and Mya McCubbin, with a special appearance from Mya McCubbin’s sister, Avery McCubbin. Many teams had to organize practices before or after school to learn routines.

Sophomore Mbuke Bunyecha was in the Babe Bunch and had many thoughts when entering the stage, “I was thinking about what my dance moves were and what I had to do to make sure that the CoMo Cow performance really hit it. I made sure my friends were going to do great, and that I was going to do great. I wasn’t thinking about messing up and I wasn’t thinking about anything else except for that dance.”

The winner of this year’s CoMo Cow was Rock Bridge team GEN-Z. The music featured hits from the late 90s to the present. The team came out fifth to perform and the judges awarded GEN-Z as first place winners. The group wore jean jackets and performed to an array of songs from various genres and times from R&B group like Destiny’s Child to more current hits like Drake, and Cardi B.

CPS Superintendent Peter Stiepleman was a judge at this year’s competition and finds a message in the CoMo Cow event itself. He said, “Everybody celebrates everybody. They’re clearly excited about their own school, but they also show such enthusiasm and respect for every group that comes up here. We are one community that tries to take care of each other, and sometimes we forget that because we go to these different schools. But truly we’re one amazing community in Columbia.”

CoMo Cow allows all three of the high schools to interact together competitively. If interested in participating next year, contact Jill Villasana.