Dancing Into The New Season

With the competitive season approaching very fast, the New Ulm Epic E-gals Dance Team is turning, leaping, and kicking their way to a successful 2017-2018 season. But this year is a little different for the team: they have a new head coach that is changing a few things for the team. “We are really focusing on hard work, support, positivity, and growing not only as a dancer but as a person,” coach Gusso said. The team is trying to create a positive environment for everyone to be comfortable for themselves. While focusing on those goals, the team also needs to buckle down and learn both a jazz and kick dance before their first competition at Waconia, on December 15th.

This past year, the former junior varsity coach stepped up to the varsity coach position. Coach Gusso had a new idea for the team this year. The team made the transition from a lyrical style of dance to a more upbeat jazz funk dance “Gusso was our JV coach last year so most of the dancers knew her pretty well. I think the hardest part is choreographing a dance style that isn’t what I’ve been previously been trained with. It’s a lot of fun to do something different, but hard to come up with ideas,” Sarah Preisinger said.

Junior Karlie Raymond told me that she is very excited to have people watch us during halftime performances! The dance team will be participating in five competitions, and four halftime performances. They practice five to six days a week, for two to three hours a day. There are 30 girls from 7th-12th grade currently on the team with one manager. Fourteen of the girls have made it on the varsity team, and the rest are on the junior varsity team. Coach Lindsey Medina, who is a first year dance coach, is helping bring success to the JV team. When I asked coach Madina what her goal for the JV team is, she said, “My goal for the team is to get everything on track by the first competition so after we can have a fun rest of the year.”

Entering the sixth week of practice, coach Gusso said that the team is looking good, “The girls have great talent, we’re just working to piece everything together.” She plans to bring the team to success by having a good attitude and teamwork, but conditioning will also be needed. “We don’t need to place at our competitions, we just want to bring everything we can to the floor,” Gusso added. “Everyone pushes each other to be the best they can be.”

First year captain, Sarah Preisinger, has been a part of the Eagles Dance Team for three years. As a captain, Sarah is responsible for choreographing both the varsity jazz and kick dance, leading stretches, and helping with anything that may need to be done for the coaches and for the team. When I asked Sarah about how practices were, she said, “Well, we normally start out with a workout to warm our muscles and then stretch. After that we split up junior varsity and varsity to work on perfecting the routine as we go.” Sarah also added “this year we are doing harder workouts and really working on perfecting the routine…”

Junior Kailey Schultz says, “I’m excited to see what the season brings and to see our improvements as a whole. I will also be really sad when the seniors leave us at the end of the season.” All of the seniors on the team are excited for this season, and is looking forward to returning next year to watch the big team grow! The dance team has great talent from the new, younger girls that will keep the program grow in and be successful in the future.