The student news site of Oakton High School

Oakton Outlook

The student news site of Oakton High School

Oakton Outlook

The student news site of Oakton High School

Oakton Outlook

Kicking Into a New Season

Kicking+Into+a+New+Season
Michael V Peters

On Saturday, November 21, Oakton’s dance team participated in their very first competition of the 2015-2016 winter competition season at Paul VI High School. Although you’re used to seeing them dance on the sidelines and put on a fantastic half-time show at football games, many do not know there is a completely separate competition component of dance team. Once football season is over, dance ramps up their practice schedule and begins creating new routines for each competition.

Dance team participates in about four competitions per season. Three of them are local, the other is a national competition in Florida. These competitions are run under the company Universal Dance Association (better known for it’s abbreviation UDA). UDA is a dance company that holds dance competitions and camps all across the country. Oakton’s dance team competes in various competitions at the regional level all across Virginia in preparation for the national competition in February, held in Orlando, Florida.

At the competitions, the dance team competes in two routines: pom and kick. In a pom routine, the dancers use pom-poms as a prop incorporated into their choreography. For kick, the routine features the different varieties of kicks. However, at the PVI competition, Oakton only participated in pom. The dances are choreographed by the dance team’s coaches, Coach Rowley and Coach Soller. As for the music, the girls on the team make suggestions for songs they would like to dance to, and the coaches create a mash-up of them.

Oakton’s dance team has a great winter ahead of them, and they love getting support from Oakton students. In fact, they even get scored on how much cheering they have from the audience. So the next time dance team has a competition, come out and support them.

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Kicking Into a New Season