Dancing Through the Snow

The last two months have been a whirlwind of hard work and accomplishment for the Elkhorn dance team. After months of hard work and preparation, the team finally got the chance to take on Orlando Florida and ESPN’s Wide World of Sports to compete at the UDA Dance Team Championship, a national competition. As they ran from the cold of Nebraska’s towards the sunshine state there was more on their mind then just getting tan.

The first obstacle they faced was getting out of the state as Omaha was at a windshield temperature of 35 below zero. Junior Tinley King tells of her fright of the delay of their flight to Minnesota. ¨Many teams moved their flights up a day or two to guarantee that the weather wouldn’t be an issue for them.¨ Tinley said. Even with the worry of the missed flights, everything went off without a hitch, even when it came to the competition.

Junior Ella Turley was blown away with her first UDA experience.¨Nationals was an amazing experience for EDT. We didn’t place the highest in pom or hip hop, but we got 13th in the nation for our game day routine. Even though we didn’t win in any means, it was so cool to get to watch and cheer on the crazy good teams from all over the country and to get inspired to do even better next year,” Turley said.

The team had some down time to explore and take on every piece of Disney World. ¨Disney was so much fun¨, Turley said. ¨we got to park hop the whole weekend on some of our downtime. Some girls even made it to all four of Disney’s theme parks, but one of the coolest nights was when the park closed early and was open only to the people who were there for nationals so the lines were super short and we got to ride everything we wanted to.

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When it was time for the team to return home, the flight from Minnesota had different ideas. The plane they were placed on had a broken engine that required them to wait for a new plane to board. But the team didn’t sleep or relax as they waited for their flight. Instead, they performed in the middle of the airport for everyone waiting to board the flight to Omaha.

With only 10 days between nationals and state, it was crucial that when the girls returned they were ready to compete again. ¨Between nationals and state we mostly did a lot of cleaning and perfecting of what we’ve already done,¨ Junior Sydney Spanel said. ¨We changed up a few formations because we added in our alternates.¨ February 14th the team traveled to Grand Island to compete for a state championship in hip hop and pom. ¨At state we did really well, we got 2nd in hip hop and 4th in pom. Our dance team hasn’t done that well since our coach Miss. Lamb was actually on the dance team. We came so close to beating Elkhorn South in the hip hop category for 1st place. We only lost to them by five points,¨ Spanel said.

As the girls get a short break off before tryouts for next season the returning members of the team are driven to make a run at a national and state championship next year.

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