Winning an event five times in a row is rare, but when it comes to our WS Dance Team, nothing seems to be impossible.
Every year, students look forward to seeing what new choreography the team will come up with. Last year, they donned “old man” masks and danced in cardigans and highwater pants. This year, they seemed to gravitate more back toward the “Matrix” theme of years past.
Whatever their music or routine, the WSDT did it again. Reigning national champs for the past four years, they just brought home their fifth national trophy.
The five-peat didn’t come without quite a few sacrifices. In order to prepare, the dance team practices for about three to four hours, five or six times a week when getting close to any competition.
“Winning Nationals for the past four years just makes us want to work even harder,” said senior Lauren Rader before she left for Nationals. “Our main goal is to be better than we were last time. We don’t aim to beat teams, we aim to beat ourselves.”
While the competition gets tougher each year, it has not broken the dance team’s intense drive to be successful. They have been humble and very grateful for all of the opportunities that they have had.
“Our team is more motivated and hungry to win another national title. Personally, it makes me work harder to be a better dancer so we can be better than we were the previous years,” said senior Katie Lee.
Nationals were held again this year in Orlando. This moment has been what the team has practiced for the entire year and they were prepared to display every surprise element they had with high intensity.
“Each year the competition gets harder so we make sure to try to step it up with new themes as visuals,” said Rader.
Though the competition was tough, our dance team performed with everything they had. And we could tell they were ready. Twitter lit up with vows “to leave it all on the stage,” and to “kill it.” And kill it, they did, receiving the highest scores of any team at the competition.
The WSDT has been well-known nationwide for pushing the limits of hip-hop performance. Coaches Tara Perez and Jason King took over the team in 2008, when Perez was still a student at George Mason University. WSDT has gone on to win countless trophies, and had a memorable run on “America’s Got Talent” three years ago. So, what’s next?
“The sky’s the limit, so reach for the stars,” said King.