Harley Lance keeps a smile on her face while she dances during the LMS Dance club rehearsal. The dance club gives middle school students an opportunity to get a taste for dance and prepare to join the Green River High School Wolf Pack Dance Team.
On Wednesday afternoons after school, music fills the Lincoln Middle School cafeteria as students gather to start practicing their dance routines.
The LMS dance club is in its third year, led by Christine Peterson, who is a coach for Green River High School's Wolf Pack Dance Team.
"It's just an opportunity for the middle school dancers or girls to experience dance and kind of get a feel for what it might be like to be on the spirit team," Peterson explained.
The program is structured as a club, so there are no tryouts and anyone who wants to can join. Club members are able to learn about dance in a more casual, less competitive atmosphere where they're able to have fun, according to Peterson.
Some members who join may have some dance experience already, while others just want to try it out or come after being invited by their friends. Everyone who joins learns at least two dance routines and works on learning technique, practicing skills like leaps, turns, toe touches and flexibility. The club then performs the routines they've learned during sporting events, starting with football and going through basketball.
This year the club has worked on two routines - a routine using pom-poms which Peterson choreographed and a hip hop routine choreographed by Rayne Welch, a Wolf Pack alumni who helps Peterson run the club.
"It's been a really good year," Peterson said, thinking about how the club has grown and been more successful than ever.
Currently the dance club has about 17 members, which is the largest it's been so far. Peterson explained the numbers of dancers can fluctuate throughout the year as students participate in other activities and sports, adding new members as they are freed up from other obligations. This is also the longest Peterson has run the club, usually ending after the girls basketball season. This year she decided to keep going since she felt like she had a strong group of dancers who grasp the challenges and enjoy the experience.
The goal behind the LMS dance club, in addition to having fun, is to have a program that can ultimately feed into the high school's dance program, letting freshmen come in to the dance team with some experience and basic skills. The high school team also works closely with the dance club, visiting LMS on performance days to talk to the club members and watch and support them during their performances. Peterson hopes all of these factors will lead club members to want to join the dance team as freshmen.
"If they can get a little taste of it here they're going to feel more comfortable in high school," Peterson said. "Sometimes that tryout week can be really intense. And my goal here is to help them not be scared because they know me, they know the dancers, and they've seen it before, and it's not all brand new."
Last year the Wolf Pack dance team saw the success of this goal, with all the girls who'd been in the LMS dance club trying out for the Wolf Pack dance team and several freshmen joining.
Watching dancers progress from the LMS club to the Wolf Pack has been one of the most rewarding parts of the experience for Peterson.
"To see their progress in the last six months is huge," she said. "And knowing where they came from two or three years ago is super rewarding. Just to instill that and for them to want to keep going and keep learning is huge."
Peterson also loves when she walks into the building and hears the girls yell her name and give her a big hug.
"That just warms my heart," she said.
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