With more prestigious competitions approaching, the Diamonds Dance team has been putting in hard work so that they can do well at the American Dance and Drill team Nationals in Denton, Texas on March 24.
Their first competition, the Kansas Spectacular, was the weekend of Jan. 27 at Olathe East High School, and the girls are more than excited to show off their new dances.
“Our goals for competitions are to do the strongest that we can do and come off the stage feeling our best and being satisfied with our performance,” Olivia Mills said. “Trophies and awards are awesome, but what really counts for us is applying corrections and things we go over in practice and hitting them on stage and reaching our highest potential as a team.”
They will be bringing a total of 9 different dances to the competition: 3 team routines (jazz, lyrical and Pom), 4 solos, and 2 duets. The solos will be performed by Charissa Dodd, Morgan Marti, Emma Leonard, and Mills, while the duets will be performed by Mills and Dodd as well Claire Kennard and Jolie Dobosz.
Throughout the season, they’ve been able to improve on working together as a team and the team believes that their dances have benefited from that.
“We definitely have improved on all of our dances and how clean they look,” Dodd said.
However, the team still has a long way to go. They have 9 weeks until Nationals and 2 more competitions. The girls are ready to put in hard work in the next month to qualify.
Although they can all agree that Nationals would be a great way to end the season, their main goal is to do their best at the remaining competitions.
“Our goals are to do well as a team. It doesn’t really matter what trophies we get.” Dodd said. “It’s enough to just know that we all tried our hardest and that we left it out there on the floor,”
Even with all of their hard work, they feel that they owe a lot of credit to their coaches Mckenzi Crow and Emily Thayer.
“Our coaches have been awesome. They’ve really pushed us to better ourselves and really work hard to make our dances look clean and be ready for competition,” Dodd said.
The Diamonds are ready to take on the rest of their season with determination as they progress through the rest of their performances.
“The team is so awesome, and all the girls work really hard so it’s fun to be apart of something where everyone is constantly motivating each other,” Mills said, “It’s even better when all of our work is worth it in the end.”