As a self-funded sport, the Becker Dazzlers dance team has done extremely well over the last few years — slowly inching up in the standings and moving from the bottom third of the best teams in the area to the middle third.
This year’s squad hopes to inch up even closer to begin challenging schools from St. Cloud Cathedral, Sartell-St. Stephen and Chaska.
Every year we get closer to be being more competitive with schools like Cathedral,” says Julie Baloun, who is coaching the high kick team.
“It’s good for our girls to see schools like Cathedral and strive to be as good as them,” said Laura Anderson, who is coaching the jazz team. “We’ve improved well enough to be included in the mix of top schools like Zimmerman and Albany. We just need to take another big step to get in the range of Cathedral.”
Anderson and Baloun saw interest in the dance team peak during spring auditions where throngs of young dancers came out to give the sport a try. So far this winter, the coaches have determined they have right around the same number of athletes this year that they had at the beginning of last.
“Some of the early tryouts dropped out because of injury, grades and we even had one move out of the area to a different school,” Anderson said. “That’s fine. We still have our core girls who have continued to work so hard to get better and are ready to get this season underway.”
The dancers have “tagged” this season with a theme that they hope will put their quality of dance in the upper echelon of competition.
The theme is “fierce” and that’s exactly what they plan to portray when they hit the floor later this month.
“We are really going to bring it this year, even more than we have in other years,” said Co-Captain Lindsay Baloun, the daughter of Julie and Brent Baloun.
“Dazzler domination!” screamed Madison Anderson, another co-captain and daughter of Head Coach Laura.
Along with the new motto, the girls plan to use intense music and flashy choreography to make the team a “dominating force.”
“Their facial expressions are going to be really important and their synchronization critical to impressing the judges, who we’ve had a hard time figuring out exactly what they’re looking for over the years,” said Laura. “We changed our routines and made adjustments where we saw they were needed and we will constantly re-evaluate our routine as the year goes on.”
Anderson, Baloun and Sanders have been in the program for a long time, even though Anderson and Sanders are just sophomores while Baloun is a junior.
“Our roles as team leaders is to set examples for the younger kids by being at practice every day and being on time,” said Sanders, the third co-captain on the team.
“We need to be a teammate first and not put ourselves above other people,” said Baloun.
“A huge part of it will be keeping the team motivated,” said Madison.
The varsity squad consists of 14 athletes while the JV team is comprised of mainly seventh and eighth-graders. The JV squad is being coached by Bridget Teigland and she is handling the choreography and music for both the jazz and high kick routines.
The varsity team is composed of Madison Anderson, Lindsay Baloun, Heather Sanders, Ali Bloom, Mary Goenner, Kate Hemminger, Ariana Hemphill, Mikayla Henkemeyer, Grace Jacobson, Jaden Klein-Potvin, Alexandra Laudenbach, Amber Mechtel, Morgan Meyer and Rachel Pena.
The Dazzler Dance team began competition Fri., Dec. 6 during halftime of the JV and varsity boys basketball games (full report on event in next week’s Citizen).
