Personal Narrative: The Saltillo High School Dance Team

At South Walton High School homecoming is an extremely important tradition. Not to mention, South Walton includes an unbelievably small number of students compared to majority of the high schools throughout the America. As I proceed through my senior year, I came to a realization that it would be my last opportunity to participate in this year’s series of homecoming events. With homecoming beginning the week of September 26, 2016 I was overjoyed to express the amount of spirit I had for my school. As each day expressed a different theme I decided to dress up for many of the occasions. On “twin day” as Meredith Grey from the cast of Grey’s Anatomy. Twin day allows students to find a partner or group of friends that could arrange a similar outfit

The Chino Hills High School Dance Team performed in their first competition at Esperanza High School. The competition started off with the Freshmen Solos, from Natalie Garcia, Scarlette Esparza, Zachary Ramos, and Simone Carrillo. Sophomore Solos, from Hayley Dyer and Megan Glaudini. Junior Solos, from Brooke Wendel, Rheana Tumang, and Mia Roberts, and Senior Solos, from Emily Ha and Florrie Ku. The sophomore, junior, and senior solos took first place!

This weekend I, personally did not have much planned. The only activity I attended was a seven-hour dance tryout for the Foley Falconettes Dance Team. At the dance tryout, all the people were made to do learn a dance, jumps and leaps, the splits, and stretch plenty therefore people wouldn’t hurt themselves. I needed to attend this to figure out what team I will be attending this for the winter. After my seven-hour dance tryouts, my family held a campfire. I could sit under the stars and listen to the campfire crackle.

An extracurricular activity that I have had the pleasure to take part in for the past five years is the Greenwood College School dance team. Starting off as a new and young member of the team, I often faded in the background and followed the instruction of senior students, showing up to practice and doing the dances as told. During my first two years, in addition to being in various senior choreographed routines, I choreographed a dance alongside girls in my grade, an experience that gave me a basis of teamwork skills including compromise, commitment, open mindedness, reliability and creativity. After I became an experienced member of the team, the coach offered me a position as the team coordinator which I happily accepted. For the past two

Even with all these insecurities in volleyball I decided to try out for my high school team. I wanted to play as many sports as possible in high school and figured what better way to start off my career than with a sport I became slightly familiar with in middle school. Volleyball camps and tryouts began a couple of weeks before the beginning of my freshman year. I started with the camps thinking it would help me gain skills that would help me in tryouts. The camp definitely helped but I shortly began to realize that this was way more serious than any volleyball I had participated in before. I realized I was going to have to put in a ton of hard work if I was going to succeed in making the team because I was not only going up against other

The field was a smoothly cut field of grass. Gravel was dragged to perfection. The base lines were perfectly straight. A blue crystal sky was looking over us. It was time to play baseball! This was the championship game between our team and Dell Rapids. Fans took their seats and the game was set to start soon afterward. Coach gave us some final words of wisdom before the game, as he stated, “Boys and keep your heads up, and play hard.” Immediately following, we were called on the field for the pledge, and the national anthem.

We were all to bowl and add together our scores. Only the top eight scoring teams would move on to the playoffs. Soon after cleaning his ball, Nate went up to initiate our first game, and I could tell off of his first roll that today was going to be a good day. Strike right off the bat! This only fueled our hype and confidence further. Because of this, everyone on the team seemed to have the game of their life. Even Coach seemed to be extremely impressed by the game that we had going for ourselves. After three games of qualifiers, we sat quietly while the officials tallied up the scores. Even though we were all nervous, I was still confident that we had made it. There was no way we failed with the amount of work we put in. After an extended period of time, the officials announced the scores. Gretna had placed third in overall score! We were so excited knowing that there were only seven teams in our way to the state champ

I was relieved to see that my group members seemed nice, since I was already the most terrified I had ever been in my whole life. My heart was pounding so fast and I could hardly stay standing. This is what you’ve been waiting for. You need to do this. This day, this moment, would change my whole high school experience. It was the day of the coed choreo dance team audition. A group of three people at a time would go in for their single chance to be accepted into the best team in the world.

"Everybody be warmed up and ready by 3:20!" My dance teacher yells to the Camden Hills Regional High School's, Strom Auditorium stage into the Black Box. I quickly slipped on my dance shorts from Pink, and a white Studio Red tank top, and then lastly my ballet slippers. I sat on the ground of the senior company dressing room, along side my friend Emily, as we started massaging our feet, getting the blood flowing to our muscles.

As Madison crossed the finish line in first place, the whole crowd went wild. There were screaming parents and crying athletes who had just won a first place state title. I looked at my teammates and said under my breath to them, “It’s our time to shine now.” We all stood up, wished each other luck, and then reported to our assigned leg.

Leading a team of teenage girls is most definitely not effortless, but it is something that I’ve done with pride for the past three years. When I entered high school, I was beyond eager to join the dance team. Unfortunately, it was not even the slightest of what I had expected it to be. We rarely performed and when we did, the feeling that I obtained exceeded embarrassment. I have danced since I was three years old, but it was so terribly draining, and not even in a physical way, that I considered quitting the team. At the end of the season my freshman year, though, the coach informed us that she was quitting and offered me the captain position for the following year. So with that, I decided to stay on the team. I was determined to make my

It was it. Today was the day that all of our hard work and preparation would matter. Weeks of conditioning and giving up our social lives to train were finally put to work. It was it. It was the NLL championship track meet.

As a result of the coaches, the dynamics between the dancers throughout this last season were superior over the other seasons I was on the team. For instance, during the first three seasons I danced on the team, before competitions started, at least two girls quit each season, and some even quit multiple seasons because they remained unsatisfied with the same issues from past seasons. However, this season, not a single girl quit because of team issues, which shows this season's superiority. Another example of improving team dynamics is the way we all grew closer throughout this season. In fact, one dancer even said, "Because of this team I have found my real friends." For example, at the beginning of my last season, some girls disliked

This was a time when all of my teammates needed to show grit, endurance, and determination. We needed to persevere. As much as I wanted to succeed I was praying a ball wouldn’t come out to me as Coach Dillinger always says, “The ball should never be hit to the outfield.” The ball was never hit out to me, but a few mistakes were made in the infield allowing three runs to score, the score was now 4-3. We were down. The situation seemed a little too familiar, being we had lost our regional final game in the last inning last season. Making this loss even harder too bare. Then it hit me, we had lost the game a second time, we couldn’t do it. The crowd became silent as the realization was going through their heads, we had worked harder than ever. That game was ours.

I was really nervous to hear that we was about to go on the field to perform. When I was sitting in the stands my friend said, “look, we have less than two minutes before halftime, and I got so nervous.” First, I started freaking out because I forgot about the whole thing. When we was getting ready to go on the field, we prayed, and did a traditional chant. After that,