During the spring pep assembly at Kennedy High school the members of the dance team do a performance called co-ed. Co-ed is where all the members of dance team, partner with one guy and teach them a dance to perform at the pep assembly.

“The main purpose is to show people how much fun we have on dance team and that’s it’s not always serious, we have fun too,” Ashlynn Greer, fr., said.

This is different from their usual performances. Most of the time it’s just the girl members, but to add an different twist they invited boys to join also.

“They think co-ed is fun and something different to do. It’s just a different experience than what their used to,” Alli Maiers, sr., said.

The senior members of the team choreograph the dance and their coach, Miranda Arends supervises and helps clean the routine.

“The seniors put a lot of work into because they choreograph the whole dance and figure out spots. It also takes a lot of teamwork from your team to teach their partner because they don’t pick it up very fast,” Greer said.

Having boys in co-ed can make certain challenges arise for the dance team members.

“Some of the non-benefits are the boys don’t listen or it’s too hard for them to do the dance so we have to change it,” Maiers said.

Despite some challenges of the boys joining, there are also benefits.

“Co-ed is a fun thing to do. I didn’t know my partner at all before I did co-ed and now were really good friends,” Greer said.

After the coach of dance team picks the boys to be a part of co-ed, practices began after school for a few weeks. Learning the dance can become time consuming for the boys, so coach Arends makes sure they reach certain requirements for them to participate.

“They have to have good grades so this isn’t something that will make their grades go down. It’s important to stay on task and make sure school is still a priority,” Maiers said.

Having such a large group of people trying to learn a dance in a certain period of time can have complications, but not for dance team.

“It’s a really loud and positive environment. It’s overall just super fun because everyone loves watching it and everyone gets really in to it,” Greer said.