COMMODORE MEDIA GROUP

The Lafayette dance team attended their first competition of the season – and in the history of the program – on November 16th in at Brandon High School in Brandon, MS. They placed second and got a bid to go to the National Dance Team Championship. The team will go to Nationals the week of January 30th through February fourth, at Disney World in Orlando, FL. 

This being the third year of Lafayette having a dance team and their first year of competing, Coach Stephanie Neely explained how much harder the team had to practice.

She said, “The difficulty came because we had to find a balance of practicing for pep rallies and games as well as practicing for competition. So it was difficult to make sure we had enough time to prepare for both. We had to schedule more practices during the week of competition.”

In her childhood, Neely was a dancer. She danced at Karen Stevenson’s Academy of Dance in Olive Branch, MS, until she was 18 years old. She has taught in the lower elementary school for five years, and over three years ago she additionally got the job of coaching the dance team. 

“I did not come up with the idea of the dance team here at Lafayette, but I was told about the possibility, and expressed my interest in the position of coaching. I was fortunate enough to interview for the job, and get it,” Neely said.

Neely also says, “It [coaching the dance team] has had many challenges, and I have definitely learned a lot. It is a lot harder than I thought it would be, but it is so rewarding to see the hard work pay off at competitions.”

The dance team will be practicing to make their routines more difficult and crowd appealing, for their second competition on December 13th, the state competition.