With a two-week preparation, the Manhattan High dance team kicked off the pep rally with their first official performance. Only seven girls participated on the team at the pep rally, but they still managed to wow the entire school.

“I personally was very nervous for the pep rally,“ sophomore Haylee Davis, new member of the dance team, said. “I was nervous that we wouldn’t get the crowd excited with the dance or with our energy.”

The dance team provided fresh and fun new skills to get the crowd pumped up and energized.

“We wanted the dance to give the crowd lots of energy,” Davis said. “It took us three days to learn the dance, then the rest of the time we cleaned it up.”

A normal practice for the dance team is working on their side line performances for games or getting ready with the band for big festival shows like the one coming up in Saturday. The dance team is still working on improving their dances and creating better moves for future events.

“I think we just need to be more focused,” Gabi Howard, dance team returnee and sophomore, said.

Davis had also mentioned that sometimes the girls tend to feel a bit self-conscious about the dance and will overthink the routine.

“…we do tend to get self-conscious about how we look and over think the dance,“ Davis said.  “When we dance and mess up we show it on our faces and we are working on that…. We always have fun with it and encourage each other and boost each other’s confidence up.”

Not only will the dance team be performing at pep rallies and on the sidelines of football games, but they will also be at home basketball games.

“It’s an outlet for stress, anxiety, sadness, frustration, anything I’m feeling,” Howard said.