Dance Team ready to keep wins rolling in at State

After a month of ramping up practice the Colfax-Mingo Dance Team are almost ready for Iowa’s state-wide competition in two weeks.

And this year, the competition is stiffer than ever.

The three day long event, which will span from Dec 1-3, will feature nearly 250 other high school teams from across the state. And that number doesn’t even come close to the over 850 solo routines that’ll be preformed over the three day event.

There will also be 22 college teams at state, but the teams coach, Cassidy Booher, assures that those teams will be in a different section than her high school counterparts.

“We’re really hoping to improve on our performance from last year, when we unexpectedly placed fourth at state,” Booher said. “Last year was my first year ever coaching a dance team, before that I’d only ever participated as a competitor, and I don’t think that our school’s team had won anything in almost seven years, so us winning anything at all was really surprising.”

And this year the team is hoping to take their success from last year and improve on it.

“We would love to place first, but honestly I think the girls would like to just place,” Booher said.

Of the three routines that they girls will be preforming, two of them will follow unique themes. The teams Pom routine will combine several modern pop songs to express the idea of “Girl Power”. The novelty themed routine will be taking inspiration from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

After preforming as a group, the seven team members will split off and compete as individuals. Individual routine music and dances are all decided by the dancer preforming it.

Practice for the team’s various competitions began during the first weeks of the school year, but in the weeks leading up to state they begin to practice for around 10 hours a week to prepare both their individual and group routines.

Most Mondays the team’s week starts with gets to the high school around 5 a.m. to start their morning practice, which lasts until school starts at 8 a.m.

After state the team will begin preparing for Regionals in January. Other than competitions the team will be spending their time preforming at different sporting events and helping local charities provide free dance classes to underprivileged kids in the area.

“We’ve grown a lot in the past few months, not just in our skills but also as a family,” Booher said.

The motto of the team is “Clear your mind of can’t”, here’s hoping that that attitude will lead the team to victory in the nextfew months.

Contact Abby Knipfel at 641-792-4687 ext. 6531 or aknipfel@shawmedia.com