As a girl, getting ready for events is just as exciting as attending them. Blasting music on speakers, everyone gathering around the same mirror while trading makeup products and doing each other’s hair always sets the mood for a fun-filled night. For the Kennedy Dance Team, it is their most sacred tradition.
Traditions on the dance team help bring individuality to the sport and form lifelong memories, some going back over 20 years.
“Every single game we got ready together, we’ve been doing it since I was in high school,” Dance Team Coach Courtney Kalb said.
Before every football game, the dance team enjoys a dinner hosted at a teammate’s house. Following that, they accompany each other in getting ready and hype each other up for the upcoming game. This gives dancers the opportunity to bond outside of the sport.
“Team dinners are my favorite thing about being on the team because they always set up a good atmosphere for games,” sophomore Dylan Gardner said.
Bonding as “sisters” is another important tradition the dance team participates in. Upperclassmen dancers are assigned an underclassman sister. Throughout the season, they do activities like making their sister a poster to hang on their locker or creating a basket with their favorite things.
“I think it’s a good way to become closer with someone you might not have chosen to spend time with from the get-go,” Kalb said. “You build a friendship with a ‘sister’ that helps you feel like you always have a person on the team that will be there for you when you need them.”
Bonding traditions are important in dance because when you can communicate with your team, it makes dancing with them that much more enjoyable. Dance can feel individually competitive but at the end of the day, the team as a whole is what matters and being on a team means motivating each other inside and outside of the sport.
“It makes it so much more meaningful when you feel like you’re taking the floor or stage as a family than as a group of strangers who all love to dance,” Kalb said.
