The Varsity dance team is well into competition season and hopes to make it further than last year. The team has seen promising growth throughout the first three competitions. Varsity suffered deductions at their first and second competitions for an illegal move at the end of their routine. In their third competition, the team took seventh place out of 22 teams.

The dancers finished in eighth place out of 18 routines at Palatine on Sat. Dec. 11.

“I feel like this year we have had so many things that could have brought us down, but we have used them as motivation and worked around all of our issues and have been even more driven to do well at competition,” said senior and captain Haley Imler.

On Sun. Jan. 19, the team competed again for a Conference title in Mundelein. Varsity finished in second place for the Prairie division, and fourth place in

the overall Conference, combining both the Lake and Prairie divisions.

“Every girl on the team has pushed themselves so much and it was so worth the hard work when we heard our name called in the top three at Conference,” said Imler. “Conference gave us even more motivation to push ourselves because it shows we have a chance to make it to State.”

The main focus of the team at this point is to prepare for Sectionals on Sat. Jan. 25 in hopes of a State qualifying score. In IHSA dance, the top six teams at each Sectional qualify to move on to the State competition to be held at Illinois State University on Fri. Jan. 31 to Sat. Feb. 1. After finishing in eighth place at sectionals last year, the determination for a spot in the top six is at an all-time high for the dancers.

“Our determination at our Conference competition gave us motivation. We truly shined. Hard work pays off. We are now working hard towards qualifying for the state competition,” said head coach Amy Shouse.