Last year, the PHS dance team missed going to State by a narrow margin.

This year they took three different routines to State, for the first time ever.

In Dance they scored 220.9, in Military they scored 227.4 (highest score of the season) putting them in seventh place at State level, and in Pom they placed 233.9, getting another highest score of the season and placing 14^th.

Senior Hadley Skaug is the dance team captain and says the team was hungry for a State run after how their season ended last year.

“We were just a couple points off from making both of our routines to State, and we knew that we wanted to be able to taste that again before a lot of our seniors leave the team,” said Skaug.

Dance Coach Arianna Schultz says she told her girls from the very beginning that they were going to be at State, “No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

The near miss of last year led the team to buckle down for State this year.

“I think it started then with the planning in the off season,” Schultz said. “I just told them, ‘I believe in you and your ability to get there,’ and that pushed their growth.”

The team had a very particular motivation that really pushed them, according to Schultz.

“The girls this year had this drive and desired to get there. I think they wanted to prove everyone wrong,” Schultz said. “Last year we were really close to going to State but just didn’t quite get there. And I think they had this internal desire to prove everyone wrong and show them that we deserve to be there.”

Junior Kyree McCardle took time with her team to train and attend several summer camps this year.

“We go to one camp, and it basically teaches you to pick up things super-fast,” said McCardle. “And then we learned techniques. You don’t have to have any experience to try out [for the team], because they will teach you.”

Schultz said that this was the earliest the team had learned their whole routines.

“We started learning competition choreography last June, so we did choreography in June, and then we finished everything in August,” said Schultz. “[The women] had more time than they’re used to actually prepare and get themselves fully comfortable with the choreography.”

To qualify for State, a team must hit a high enough score at the District competition.

“One of our routines wasn’t scoring high enough to actually go to State until Districts,” Schultz said. “So, until it mattered, it wasn’t hitting the score it needed. And then they qualified for all three and got there. With our POM routine we were in the top 50% of routines at State, which for me was a huge deal to go from not going [at all] to being in the top 50% in our dance routine.”

Schultz encouraged the team throughout the competitions to have “have the best time,” and “perform like you’re never going to get to do these routines again.”

“You never know if you’re going to qualify at Districts, because anything can happen,” said Schultz. “Going into State, we were like, ‘okay, these are your last times to perform these routines. You’re never going to get to do them again.’ Literally everything you have, we want to see it come out there. And they did. They just had the time of their lives.”

McCardle felt nervous at first because of the number of people in attendance.

“Once you started performing, you felt more confident and more ‘I can do this.’ So, it felt really good,” said McCardle.

McCardle was not the only member of the team experiencing anxiety; Skaug felt it as well.

“The second you get on the floor, your mind just goes blank,” Skaug said. “You block out everything but the music, and it honestly just feels like another competition at that point, which can help settle some of the nerves in the moment.”

Schultz said that the moment at State ends up feeling special, her favorite moment being when the team comes off the floor after every performance at State.

“It’s like the ultimate moment of team bonding, where they come off, and they’re just all celebrating and having a good time,” Schultz said.

For seniors, the moment could have been emotional as it was the last day and the last performance of their high school career.

“After coming off for military, it was our last one of the day. They all came off and you’d expect seniors to be emotional, right? It’s their last performance, but we came off the floor and everyone was like, ‘No, it’s over. I don’t want it to be up, which, honestly, as a coach you feel like you did something, right? When they’re like, ‘No, it’s not like, it can’t be done. I don’t want it to be over. I want to keep going.’ So, I think that moment for me, I was just really soaking it all in,” Schultz said.

McCardle says the experience felt “worth it.”

“If I had to tell anyone to try out for the dance team, I would,” said McCardle. “Because it’s such a great like team to be on the bonding and it was a very good year this year.”

Skaug, as a senior, is leaving the team after this year, however she says she has very high hopes for next season.

“I think we’ve kind of set the tone for it this year, and hopefully girls coming back next year will be able to encourage new ones coming on about like this is the standard we’re setting,” Skaug said. “We’re not settling for anything less than that and hoping to go above it again.”

Another unexpected outcome for the season: Arianna Schultz won Coach of the Year at State.

“I was not expecting it at all; they started talking, and you know it’s the same speech every single year where they start the award ceremony,” Schultz said. “And I was not expecting it to be my name. I was sitting there and somebody even asked me, ‘Well, who do you think it was going to be? And genuinely, I [said], ‘Oh, I thought it was going to be this coach.’ I already had the name I thought was going to get called in my head. I was in complete shock. I just remember my team being like ‘that’s our coach. That’s our coach.’”