Lancer Dancer tryouts started this week at 6 a.m. in the aux gym April 25-28. The girls trying out are expected to learn three dances during the allotted practice time, which is every morning Monday-Thursday. Thursday after school, the girls perform each dance in front of a set of judges. They pick a partner to tryout with that has a similar skill level and someone they feel comfortable with.
One of the three dances that must be performed is a flag routine that is about one minute. Then, they learn a hip hop dance in 10 minutes and perform it on the spot and finally a jazz dance.
The dancers also have to learn a leap combo and a main jazz dance. The leap combo is seven jumps in combination. The jazz dance is learned on Tuesday and that dance is 40 percent of their score.
Freshman Liddy Stallard made JV last year and is nervous for the hip hop portion of the tryout because they do not learn the dance until right before they go on.
“I know all my teammates are going through the same thing so you want to try to always stay positive for them, but it’s hard to do that when you are all competing for the same spots,” Stallard said.
Stallard’s class will be extremely competitive because they are 18 dancers competing for five spots on varsity because only five seniors left this year.
The scoring is based on a percentage scale. The teacher and coach elevation is 25 percent, leap and turns is 15 percent, jazz dance is weighted the highest at 40 percent hop dance is 12.5 percent and flag dance is 7.5 percent. The teams are chosen based on the natural break in scores.