U of I Competition

This weekend the Kennedy Varsity Dance Team attended the long awaited University of Iowa dance competition at the Carver Hawkeye Arena. This was the first real competition of the season. However, we did compete our Pom at UDA camp this summer and received first with a bid to nationals. We knew that we didn’t want that to be our peak of the season because it hadn’t even really started yet.

                Ever since UDA dance camp in July we continued to practice three to five days a week. In those practices we speed up pom a lot making it faster and a lot more difficult. We also made a lot of changes to the choreography and formations. This process is a lot harder and longer than most would imagine. As a team we have to go through and reclean all the new parts. We make sure everyone’s arms and bodies are at the exact same angles, this takes a lot of repetition. We also have to work our stamina up and do the dance many times over and over again in small chunks, continuing to add on until we can do the full dance because it is hard to do the dance that fast.

                Pom was not the only thing we worked on, we also learned a whole other jazz routine. This took a lot longer than expected because there are so many different things and parts going on at the same time in the routine. Cleaning the jazz dance was a very long process with all the parts, and we didn’t feel quite ready for the competition.

                At the University of Iowa competition this weekend our hard work started to pay off. We did way better than we all had expected. We competed in the medium varsity pom and jazz divisions, and we got first place and won both of them. Not only was this a huge accomplishment but we also beat Iowa City West which is one of our huge competitors. Not only did we prove to ourselves how great we are, I think we also proved to our school how hard we work, even though not a single one of the students at Kennedy High School came to support us. At the end of the day it comes down to work ethic and team work and there is not a single team or group of girls I would rather do what I love with.