by Cassie Florido

On Feb. 23 the STA dance team competed in the Class 5A State Dance competition in St. Louis. However, a day before the competition, the team learned that they would not be making the trip to compete at State due to the snowstorm that hit Kansas City earlier in the week.

According to junior dance team member Katie Daniels, on Friday morning instead of getting ready to make the trip to St. Louis, the team received an email alerting them that they would not be competing at State.

Athletic Director Mark Hough said that safety was the first concern when it came to cancelling the trip to St. Louis.

“The bus company [the team] was using was not comfortable with putting buses on roads with ice,” Hough said.

Senior dancer Sara Meurer said that she was devastated when she heard the news STA would not be dancing at State.

“State is what our team works for the entire year and we were all pretty disappointed and confused when we found out we wouldn’t be able to compete.”

Quickly the news spread over Twitter of the dance team being unable to compete at State. Fellow STA students and other local schools joined the dance team members tweeting the hashtag #LetDanceTeamGoToSTAte.

Junior dancer Katherine Viviano said that the support from Rockhurst, Shawnee Mission East and Sion students was unreal.

“I was almost brought to tears when I saw my Twitter feed completely full of the #LetDanceTeamGoToSTAte hashtag,” Viviano said.

Even though the team was not planning on dancing, Daniels and Meurer said that 10 of the 13 dance team members were being driven by team parents to St. Louis to cheer on other teams competing. Most of the girls brought their costumes and makeup just incase something happened and the team would be able to compete.

Hough said that other schools that planned not to go to State changed their minds after the sun came out that Friday morning and the roads began to clear.

“Ms. Bone made the final decision as to whether the team could travel on their own to the competition,” Hough said. “It was great of our parents to step up and help.”

According to Daniels, when the school found out the team was making the trip to St. Louis, they decided to let the team perform.

“We were all so excited when we got the call that we would be allowed to perform,” Meurer said.

Daniels said the school arranged rides for the other three girls and made sure the girls already on their way to St. Louis received their uniforms. The school then talked to The Missouri Dance Team Association to get STA back on the performance schedule.

At the competition, the team competed in 5A Pom and 5A Dance. The team placed 5th in Pom and 7th in Dance. The team finished 9th overall in the competition.

Meurer said that she thinks the team performed the best they had all year even after moving up to the 5A division, which is a much harder division.

“I couldn’t have been more proud of the team’s performance,” Meurer said. “We work so hard from June until February and that hard work really paid off when we got to State.”

Viviano said the team performed pretty close to flawless at State.

“Screaming the vocals and dancing with every single ounce of energy our bodies could produce on the gym floor, our team couldn’t have been happier at that moment,” Viviano said.

Viviano said that the main thing the team learned this year was to cherish every moment.

“This year was a great one,” Viviano said. “But when [the privilege to perform at State] was taken from us, our determination and perseverance as a team proved that we are invincible, even if we don’t get first place every competition.”