As the music came to an end, freshman Caroline Li smiled proudly and held her head high. Her nerves settled as she and the other six members of the dance team finished their performance at the NorCal State Dance Championships on Feb. 8.
The team finished in fourth place out of 10 teams.
Taking place at Monta Vista High School, this competition was the team’s second this semester. The girls performed a routine to a hip-hop mash up featuring music by Nicki Minaj and Lana Del Rey.
Junior co-captain Joy Tang described the routine as going from “hard hitting hip hop to sassy hip hop to somewhat smoother hip hop.”
The team had been working on this dance since the end of football season to prepare for the competition season. With all of the girls putting in the time to attend extra practices, head coach Brittany Sua was able to make sure each move was precise.
In its first competition of the year at Bella Vista High on Feb. 1, the team’s performance was not what it expected due to a technical difficulty with its soundtrack. This increased the nerves for the girls as they all wanted to redeem themselves at the NorCal State Dance Championships.
“We were pretty nervous before we performed, but I think we did pretty well [at the NorCal Championships],” Tang said. “Since our team is new, we didn’t have a specific rival team but there were a lot of really strong teams at Monta Vista.”
The team was judged based on execution, synchronicity, technique, style and finesse. Both the judges and the team were pleased with the performance.
“The performance went well,” Tang said.
As a team, I feel like we perform better when there is a crowd, compared to when we are in the dance studio. The stunts were executed [well], and we hit our moves.”
While the cheer team has wrapped up its competition season and won’t rehearse or compete until the fall, the dance team will continue to prepare a routine for the Spring Fling rally on March 27.
