The Woodland girls dance team is accustomed to performing for the home crowd and competitions in Washington state.
The team grew and the bond of the dancers on the Woodland High School Dance Team strengthened throughout their experience at the Dance Team Union Nationals in Orlando, Florida, Feb. 14-16.
Woodland head coach Andria Terry said traveling to a completely different time zone was already an added difficulty, but she said the team performed its best of the season even with the heightened pressure.
The Beavers dance squad performed in the medium varsity pom and small varsity hip hop categories in their first ever nationals event.
“You are dancing on a much higher level with way more people and higher level teams,” Terry said of nationals. “Also, the pressures of nationals is really high. You are dancing on a floor that you’ve never danced on before with the top teams in our nation that we’ve never seen before.”
During the trip, Terry said the team experienced unprecedented growth. She said the level of improvement during the extended weekend trip to Florida was almost on par with how the team developed over an entire summer of working together.
“I would say it was definitely a very unique experience compared to any other competition that we’ve been to. It was huge,” Dance team captain Panda Terry said. “There were lots of very talented teams there. We really got to bond with our team.”
Senior dancer Katera Rapleye also said the trip was a great bonding experience and allowed the team to learn more about each other, which will help for the rest of their season.
“That was a big part of it, so that we could go into the rest of our season, like, even closer as a team and tighter knit,” Rapleye said.
The Beavers dance squad will be gearing up for districts on March 15 at Mountain View High School. Pending the outcome of the competition, they will perform at state on March 28 at the Yakima Valley SunDome.
The experience and growth built at nationals will be a huge key to the Beavers hopeful success at the district and state competitions.
“I think watching the growth from football season to competition season and getting to go to nationals was crazy compared to starting off the season with I think five new teammates that haven’t been with us before,” Rapleye said. “And having added them into a team with seven seniors, it was like a big change for us, I think. And being able to create a bond with so many new girls and still create a team and our team that looks like we’ve been dancing together for so much longer than we have, it’s really cool to see.”
During Nationals, on Valentine’s Day, the team dressed up and created memories by going out to a restaurant as a full squad, which was Panda Terry’s favorite memory, along with staying in hotel rooms together.
“I think staying in the rooms together is also just unique to what we’re used to because we’re used to seeing each other every day at school and practice but not really outside of that in that type of situation,” she said.
Back at home, the team was thankful for the support of the Woodland community as a whole. Every half-time performance gains an interest from the home crowd, which Andria Terry said is the result of a long process to build the interest in dance from the community.
“It is awesome. It took a long time to build that,” Andria Terry said of the community interest. “I think it takes time to teach your crowd and your community that there’s proper times to cheer on people and that it’s OK to yell and cheer when we’re dancing. And I think it’s great to see that energy and that the whole place is a great game day experience. I love that for sure.”
