Eventually, these moments will become more common place, but hopefully the pride will remain. For now, the honor of documenting historical firsts for the Hastings Dance team will continue to be exciting and emotional for all involved. Last year was the Raider’s first year as an official MSHSL team. Head Coach Kayla Sohn grabbed the hands of her two assistants, and they jumped feet first off the pier without even looking. This year, they helped orchestrate the first ever home meet for dance team held at Hastings High School.
“It was so fun to host! I knew it would be exciting, but I didn’t expect the pride and flood of emotions when we were standing in our court for national anthem and the emcee announced that we were making history with the first time of Hastings hosting a dance team meet. I know the captains felt the same pride as we soaked it all in,” explained Sohn.
Reflecting on last year, she mentioned how she did not truly understand the scoring expectations of judges for dance team meets, and that has changed after getting a season under her belt. Hosting a dance team meet is a whole different animal that Hastings had never experienced before, and they really knocked it out of the park.
Chatting with Activities Director Trent Hanson, he knew going into it that it was going to be a lot, but he did not expect it to be as big of a production as it was. He was very proud at how the entire dance team parents and volunteers stepped up to help put on a great, safe performance for the girls.
The one downside of the event was needing to legitimately kick everyone out of the field house. Dancers need fixed points to focus on during their actions like spins and jumps. Fans don’t need to sit perfectly still like statues, but if there were walkers on the upper track, or wrestlers in and out of the side wrestling room, or basketball practice going on the other courts, those things would cause issues. They hand to lock the space down as much as possible.
That is where the parents stepped up to volunteer. There were at least 20 parents wearing blue and gold “security” shirts helping keep people out of spaces that fans cannot go. There are five teams, and each team needs a secure, private location that is close to the gym to change, do make-up and secure their belongings. That takes security volunteers because the dancers need to have that privacy like a locker room.
Between each routine, the doors are secured so no one is walking around during the routine. Announcer Matt Wallace has been the voice of Metro East Dance Competitions for more than a decade, and he does a great job guiding both security and fans on proper etiquette during the competition and he really regulates the flow of the whole thing.
Sohn was bursting with pride and gratefulness when she spoke about the army that supported the team.
“We have known we were hosting since this summer, so we have been taking notes at other meets and thinking strategically about how to leverage the strengths our school has. Trent was phenomenal, helping us tie how they host other sports into the nuances of a dance team meet. The director of our conference and the other coaches in the conference was also super helpful throughout the process. Lastly, and maybe the most important people were our booster club and Hastings dance team families. Directors Shonna Nadeau and Robin Siebenaler, Deb Courneya, led the charge with our Hastings Dance Team booster club and made sure that the event was organized and ran smoothly. We heard such positive feedback, and our army of volunteers truly made that possible. We truly felt so supported by the high school administration, the community, and the other teams in our conference. It made it such a positive experience having everyone else just as excited as we were for the event.”
The emotion of the first ever dance competition at HHS might have been a little overwhelming for all involved, because it still was a competition and the Raiders did not score as well as they did the previous week in the jazz division. Last week, they earned second place in Varsity Jazz, this week was a fourth-place finish of the five teams. High Kick was a new routine this week and the Raiders also placed fourth. Junior Varsity placed second for their jazz routine.
Even though the scores did not go the way the Raiders had hoped, the first ever home meet was a total success. The girls had a week to fine tune the high kick routine that they performed at Two Rivers on Dec. 9, we’ll have that in next week’s edition. The Conference Championships are scheduled for Dec 19. at So. St. Paul at 6:30 p.m.