Photo courtesy of Celeste Hanson
Hastings High School’s first all-girls Show Choir, UNTAMED, performed for the annual Scooters National Coffee Conference at the CHI Health Center in Omaha, Nebraska on March 18.
UNTAMED partnered with Scooter’s Coffee this year to create a show that would be recognizable at Show Choir competitions.
“The idea was to pick something that would get people to talk about it, and high school kids talk about coffee a lot,” Show Choir Director Christian Yost said while laughing. “…I was thinking, ‘Let’s shoot big and see what happens!’”
The girls had the opportunity to go out into a different setting than they were used to. Instead of competing, they just performed.
“I think they felt really seen just as humans and as a group,” Yost said. “I felt like people actually saw this and they wanted to see more of it, which is really cool.”
After speaking with the CEO, various Vice Presidents, and the head of Marketing for Scooters, UNTAMED was arranged to perform at their conference. For 17 minutes, 33 girls all wearing Scooter’s barista outfits danced and sang in front of Scooters’ executives, including the vice presidents and CEO of the company — a moment none of the girls expected.
“I didn’t think it would be this big of a deal because it was a first-year group, but everyone put in time and energy, and we got really far,” junior Tara Edgerling said.
At the conference, the girls were given Scooter’s merchandise and free coffee and got to talk to the people who attended.
“When we found out about the conference, a lot of us freaked out and then asked if we got free coffee,” Edgerling said while laughing.
Yost made an adjustment before being able to make the partnership work. One of the songs on the setlist, “It’s A Hard Knock Life” from Annie, was changed into “It’s a Caffieinated Life,” a parody he made about the hard life as a barista.
“They were all about the partnership,” Yost said. “We just needed to make this change to make Scooter’s happy, which worked out.”
Since UNTAMED is a first year group, they needed a foundation, and Edgerling believed a lot of the girls made that foundation stronger.
“I feel like the people up in the front rows like Iris and Callista get groovy with it,” Edgerling said. “It just makes [us] feel better when we all pump each other up and people put so much more into the dance.”
Some of the girls in UNTAMED had not done show choir before this year and had gotten to experience something that some show choir students never got to.
“It’s really nice to see people who have never done show choir before try [it] out, and they get to be around people and learn things,” Edgerling said.
The National Coffee Conference was the last show for the 2025-2026 UNTAMED group, a bittersweet moment as three of the girls are graduating.
“I don’t feel like anyone was down that day. I feel like everyone was excited, and we were all happy that we got to do this last thing together,” Edgerling said. “…It was just good for all of us to end on a good note and do something that we all wanted to do together.”
