Pink high heels—each fitting a specific personality—clack against a stage floor as nine individual women take their places readying to charm an audience with popular music. The catch is, there are no bands or tracks to back them up.
The Bettys, a cappella group, and University of Wyoming RSO, is composed of women students who have a passion for performing and sharing music.
The group started in 2006 by members from a university girls choir. The founder though that there needed to be a woman counterpart to the male a cappella group on campus The Happy Jacks, said Bettys member Jessi Johnson.
“There were some girls from Bel Canto, six of them actually,” said Johnson. “There was no female a cappella group on campus at that time.”
Since the group’s founding, The Bettys have formed a repertoire of around 20 songs and give back to the community by performing at community events and forwarding donations from their concerts to local Laramie organizations.
The Bettys will be performing their annual fall concert in the Education Auditorium on Dec. 12. The group has been practicing their numbers and working with new members to perfect the songs.
“Transitions can be hard,” said Bettys member Kristina Mireles. “We have three new girls this year and they’ve had to memorize close to 20 songs.”
With a group of nine, schedules can be hard to coordinate. Also, it can be hard getting along, all the time. Most of the Bettys members admitted to having conflicts arise occasionally.
“Even if something comes up, it is good to talk about,” said Mireles. “And it’s good to start a conversation and resolve it.”
Out of the conflict comes a more cohesive group, the Bettys agreed.
“For a group of girls we’re pretty good,” said Brittany Anderson eliciting laughing and agreement from the group. The Bettys agreed that from their experience in the group they will have lifelong friends even after their time in college is over.
The group spends four hours a week together and performs as often as they can, said Mireles. Right now the Bettys are practicing their set list for the fall concert on Dec. 12.
They have introduced three new songs to their repertoire this year. Mireles said that they always are open to taking suggestions for songs from the public. The best way to do that and keep up to date with the Bettys’ performances is to find them on Facebook.
