For years, the Oakdale High School Dance Team has caught the attention of the student section during every home game half time. On September 8th, the first home football game of the season got rained out and moved to the next day. It started out with a little rain storm, delaying the game for thirty minutes. After two long hours of waiting in the gym, the dance team received the news that they wouldn’t be performing at all for the whole weekend.
The first home game was also supposed to be Youth Night for girls doing LOUYAA Poms, where they would show a dance they spent multiple weeks learning. Junior Sophie Hossain, shared her thoughts on the game delay: “I felt bad because we were supposed to perform with the LOUYAA girls, and they just didn’t get to perform. Everyone was looking forward to the first game, and the rain ruined that.” The girls were very excited to show off their hard work at a high school game, which to them is such a thrilling opportunity for them.
There were many mixed feelings throughout the setback for the team. “I feel like we’re definitely going to do better than we would have, because of the delay, and we had extra time to sharpen all of the hand movements, and really nail down the choreography,” Hossain stated.
However, there was also a downside to the gap between the two games. “I feel like our team has slacked off a little bit because we had so much extra downtime between our next performance.” Hossain remembered.The team wasn’t necessarily focused through all of the practices.
Even though it gave the team more time to make the routine strong, it was still a let-down for the team once they found out that they were unable to perform. Senior Madilyn Tribbit shared, “A lot of us wanted to dance for the first home game of the season.” It’s easy to tell how much the team was looking forward to the game and performing in it, and how upsetting it must’ve been for them.
Freshman Sasha Schoener joined the team a few weeks late, making her unable to perform in the first game. Even though she couldn’t be in the performance, she was still able to watch and enjoy the team displaying their work. When asked for any feedback on the team, she responded saying, “They always managed to fix any mistakes in the routine, making it look really good. You can also tell that they have a lot of fun when performing..” Even though they were upset that they had to put in two extra weeks of work, it seems to have been worth it.
Sophomore Nayja Njenga has been going to football games since her freshman year, and has always enjoyed the dance team’s routines during halftime. “I think it looked a lot more intricate this time, you could really tell that you guys put a lot of work into perfecting it,” Njenga explained, when asked to compare the team’s performance from last year to this year. Overall, the dance team seems to have done a great job working through this delay! They were able to perfect their dance and keep spirits high throughout the two-week delay.
