West Springfield High School Dance Team Wins Fourth Nationals Title

They’ve done it again: The West Springfield High School Dance Team (WSDT) won their fourth consecutive National Dance Alliance (NDA) Hip Hop championship last weekend in Orlando.

The team returned to the Burke area late Tuesday evening to a warm welcome from parents, alumni, West Springfield High School students and staff, said Jason King, one of two coaches and choreographers for the team. Coaches King and Tara Perez have worked together for the last eight years.

“Twitter and Facebook helped spread the word pretty quickly, so we’ve had a lot of congratulations about the win since Sunday,” said King. “It means a lot to the them to know that their school was supporting them.”

Dubbed the “Super Bowl of dance,” the National Dance Alliance is the “largest and most prestigious cheerleading and dance competition in the world” and features more than 20,000 athletes, according to the website.

The WSDT came away with the competition’s biggest prize with a hip-hop routine that had a twist, but winning came as a surprise, said King and Perez.

“This year was difficult,” said King. “We lost a real strong team of senior leaders, so we didn’t have a whole lot of expectation and we didn’t expect to win nationals at all. We were just thankful to win finals.”

Perez said the biggest obstacle for the team this year was training each of the 10 new dancers. The team is a mix of students in freshman through senior grades.

“They worked really hard and by the end of the year, it was just a completely different team,” said Perez.

Every year, Perez said there are a handful of new team members, some of whom have never danced before or learned choreographed routines, but she described the experience of watching them transform into talented dancers  “amazing.”

“It’s great to win nationals, but it’s not about winning for us,” said Perez. “We tell the dancers it’s about the journey you go through to get there. If we would have gotten second or third place, we still would have been excited because we put in such hard work this year. With all the difficulties we’ve had, if we hadn’t won, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

The goal of this year with the new team was to change from the team’s usual habit of doing darker themed performances, said King.

This year’s theme was “old people," which the team demonstrated by wearing realistic silcone masks that they purchased online with money the team raised from various fundraisers from the year.

“The masks were so realistic, people couldn’t tell they weren’t old people,” said King.

The team wore hoods at nationals until they got on stage during their routine. They began dancing in their usual, dark fashion, and then revealed their new twist with the masks.

“Everyone’s jaw in the arena just dropped,” said King.

While the routine was successful, King said there were some difficulties in maintaining a balance between combining the “old people” theme with modern, hip-hop music.

“We wanted to do it right and with class, but it was tough to make it hip-hop and relate it back to old people. We didn’t want to offend people. In the end, it ended up being a really fun and entertaining routine,” said King.

Now that they’re home, Perez said she, King, and the team will enjoy a bit of downtime before they start preparing for next year.

“Our season runs year-round. Tryouts are in April or May and we practice all summer and continue into the fall. It’s a very big commitment,” said Perez.

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