Crunch Time: The Lancer Dancers competed at their state competition on Nov. 18, qualifying for finals and taking fifth place

The Lancer Dancers sat together on the arena floor, tightly holding hands and clenching their jaws as they anxiously awaited their results. After what seemed like hours, a judge finally walked up to the podium to face the room and announced:

“In no particular order, the following teams have qualified for finals: Lawrence-Free State, Washburn Rural …”

Hearts pounded. 

“Shawnee Mission East.”

After a split-second moment of surprise, all the tension was relieved. Together they leapt onto their feet, hugging and cheering as the applause of other teams rang in their ears. They qualified for finals for the second year in a row, placing fifth out of 18 teams at the State Game Day competition.

The Lancers first performed a jazz dance followed by a fight song and band dance both of which were performed to recorded marching band music. 

Two more teams competed at the Stormont Vail Event’s dance floor than last year, providing the Lancer Dancers with daunting competition, according to Lancer Dancer and senior Julie Griggs. To make it more selective, the judges also would only be accepting six teams to the finals compared to the eight that made it in the past. Still, the dancers felt capable of repeating or improving their state result from last year with extra experience.

“Everyone wants to make finals because last year was the first year we competed at a game day competition, and we were still able to make it,” Griggs said. “We’re hoping that the experience we have pays off and we can hopefully make it farther this year.” 

Griggs noted that though the team had the advantage of experience compared to the year before, they likely had less time to practice their routine than the other teams in the competition.

“Blue Valley schools and Mill Valley have the whole beginning of the year to train for state while Shawnee Mission schools can’t truly start on their game day routine until October because we focus on band shows during football season,” Lancer Dancer and senior Avery Guck said. “It technically puts the team behind.” 

The Lancer Dancers began practicing nearly 10 hours a week, working entirely on their state routine. The routine itself is also constantly changing, due to last minute changes their coaches made with the hopes of improving their material score. Coach Alexis Close asked dancers to send a recording of themselves performing the dance from home in order to fix mistakes.

Guck pointed out that though memorization is an important component of their practice, most of their time is spent “cleaning up” the routine — making sure that everyone is on the same count, their formations are correct and movement is in-sync.

“Two people can learn the same thing, but they’re going to interpret how to do that differently,” said Griggs. “Our coaches make sure they’re doing it exactly the same. We want everyone to look uniform.”

With only three weeks to prepare, the Lancer Dancers brought back former East coach Britney Hinote to help perfect their routine. According to Griggs, her presence was immediately appreciated by the dancers, as she helped to quickly clean their dance.

“I think her being there got us all to really focus because she’s someone we’re not used to being around as much,” Griggs said. “We’re on our best behavior, and no one’s talking, everyone worked really hard. She was a huge help cleaning, I don’t think we’d be where we are now without her.”