Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
The Huskiettes dance team began its competitive season Saturday at Thurston High School in Springfield.
The team has an intricate program, which made it difficult to earn high scores from the judges the first time out, but impressed the audience immensely, Coach Kristin Ashcraft said.
“The audience went crazy,”
she said. “Tehcnically, we need to improve.”
The team includes 16 dancers, who unveiled a portion of their state routine at halftime at the boys basketball game Friday night.
The team will compete three more times, Feb. 2 at Stayton, Feb. 9 at Molalla and March 1 at Dallas, before the state tournament to be held at the University of Portland on March 14 and March 15.
“We have two weeks to improve on things,” Ashcraft said.
“We’re doing what judges call ‘building a program.'”
The theme this year is Latin, she said.
“It’s sort of like a salsa.”
Musically, the team’s routine will include Santana’s “Black Magic Woman,” Gloria Estefan’s “Conga,” and Ricky Martin’s “La Copa de la Vida,” the official song of the soccer World Cup.
The team is young, Coach Ashcraft said. The only senior is exchange student Hanae Sasaki of Japan.
Ashcraft has five returning dancers, including junior Whitney Stoner and sophomores Jessica Parga, Kayla Froman, Brianna Wirth and Sara Traeger.
“We have a boy (Kyle Lewis) this year, so we’ll be doing partner stunts. He’ll have a couple of features.”
They are joined by junior Katie Reed, sophomores Tori Lillich and Kaitlyn Prante and freshmen Kayla Gaylord, Krystal Juza, Kyle Lewis, Kaitlyn Long, Michaela Parks, Mikaela Stoner and Rachel Thomas.
Stoner and Parga are team captains.
“Having that big freshman-sophomore base is good,” she said. Team captains, along with almost every member of the team, will return next year with experience.
“I want to say this is one of the best team’s I’ve had,” Ashcraft said. “I don’t want to discount my other teams.”
This team has a great attitude and enthusiasm, she said. “Personality is one of their big strengths. I have a couple of big hams, which is good (in dance).”
The Huskiettes’ ability is improving constantly, she said. Only two of the dancers have much formal training outside of the team. The rest have natural ability, and they’re developing it quickly.
“I think the girls this year are learning a lot more with technique,” Whitney Stoner said. They’ve improved across the board. Toes are pointing the right way, and they’ve improved their flexibility and leaps.
The Huskiettes have a fair chance of doing well this year, Parga said.
“I think this year, we’ll do better,” Stoner said.
“We’re pretty psyched to show it off,” Parga said.
They have started difficult, advanced moves, she said. I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do next week when they face two state second-place teams, Valley Catholic and Santiam.
The Huskiettes will dance in the 4A small division at state if there are enough schools, at least eight, competing. Otherwise, they will compete with all 4A schools.
Last year, the team competed against all 4A schools and placed 10th. In tournaments throughout the season, the team placed fourth, third, second and then first, improving every single tournament.
The large teams look better than the small teams, generally speaking, Ashcraft said. Small teams can win, though. It happened with a couple of schools last year, and “I was encouraged to see that.”