As halftime begins the lights are cut off. Fans attentions are drawn to the court as a bright spotlight shines on a group of people in the middle of the court. Music begins to play and the group breaks out dancing. The crowd’s attention is captured by none other than the Varsity Dance team.
The dance team started as a club in 2021 that only performed at halftime during basketball games. This year, the club has turned into an official team that performs not only at halftime for boys’ basketball games, but also at competitions.
The team is coached by 2022 alumni Neala Jacobson-Dicks who was a dancer on the team when it first started before it was competitive and was one of the people pushing to grow the program.
“We started off with not many people who consistently came to practices, it was more laid back and practices weren’t mandatory now it is more serious,” Jacobson-Dicks said.
After graduation, Jacobson-Dicks made the transition from member to teacher by taking on the role of the dance team’s first full-time coach, before she took the job the dancers ran things and were more laid back now they have someone pushing them.
“Now we practice four times a week whereas before we practiced maybe one or two times,” Jacobson-Dicks said.
With the new opportunity to go compete against other schools as a team practices became harder and more focused on dances for the competition, rather than their routines for basketball games.
“One of the goals is to run it all out like we are at the competition, so it prepares our minds and bodies for when we are competing,” Jacobson-Dicks said.
Leading up to their first competition, which was on the 14th of January, the team was nervous to head into uncertain territory. Though Captain Ashley Hudgens was not phased at all she was confident in the team and the work that they had put in.
“I was not entirely sure on what the competition would be like, but I know we all put in hard work during practices and were ready,” Hudgens said.
Following the competition Hudgens thinks the team’s morale was at an all-time high and everyone enjoyed being around each other.
“We all had some nerves but the energy in the team was at a peak and we enjoyed representing Northview as a team,” Hudgens said.
After their first competition, the team came away with third place in poms, third in jazz, and fifth in hip hop. Sophomore Summer Swanzy is gleeful about how the competition went, but she’s not completely satisfied either.
“[Our] first competition went really well. We think we can do better, but [this was] six other schools were competing with us so we did very well for our first time,” Swanzy said.
The dance team continues to work on their craft for their upcoming competition which is on Saturday, January 27th.
