On December 7th, the Freeport High School Competitive Dance Team attended their first dance competition of the 2025-26 season at Crystal Lake Central High School.
This will be the first time since 2018 that the FHS Competitive Dance Team is entered in division 2A. For the past 5 years the team has competed in division 1A. The division a school is entered in is determined by the enrollment size of the school.
After an hour and a half long bus ride, the team arrived at Crystal Lake Central High School, the hosting school. Once they were checked in, they headed to their room to begin preparing for their performance.
Junior, Katelyn Cummins says, “I’ve made sure that I’m still taking breaks so I don’t get burnt out too early and I’ve also practiced at home to ensure I know my dance and cleaning”. This is how she prepares both mentally and physically for her performances.
The team listened to their performance song to go through the dance mentally before they began physically conditioning to ensure they were in the correct mindset.
Next, they began to warm their bodies up. They stretched and did different exercises to engage different parts of their bodies like their core and legs.
After going through 3 different warm up gyms, the team kept each other fired up through pep talks.
Senior, Madelyne Spaide says, “We always huddle up and give each other reminders and encouraging words to make sure we are all prepared and going to perform our best.”
2 minutes and 36 seconds later, the team had finished completing their routine.
Junior, Sydney Rackow says, “I think it definitely showed how much we as a group have grown over the season.”
The team placed 13th out of 14 routines, and 9th out of 10 schools.
Coach Tara Hersey says, “Welcome to 2A” after viewing the scores. The team feels frustrated due to their division placement. They do not think it is fair because they sit right at the cutoff between 1A and 2A.
While the student enrollment number is larger than past years, their team size is significantly smaller with only 10 members.
The judges gave the team feedback and comments that they can now spend their practice time working on to make their routine better.
The girls remain optimistic about the trajectory of their season and they are taking the constructive criticism as motivation to strengthen their routine and skills.