As many people may not know, the Lioneer Dance Team is not considered a sport by the school. They have it listed as a club along with all the other clubs you can find in the website https://aahs.aasdcat.com/.
The dance team does not get any funding from the school, and they have to fundraise themselves. They have to do all their own fundraisers and even get multiple businesses to sponsor them.
They have to raise so much money to get things like their uniforms, warm ups, Lioneer clothing, bows, pom poms and backpacks. The dancers on the team even have to spend their own money to buy dance shoes and regular shoes for practice and all of the games.
The cheerleaders on the other hand, get funded by the school and are considered a sport. The only difference between Lioneers and cheerleaders is that cheerleaders do all of the football games.
This year, the cheerleaders got to try out for States and qualify in it while the Lioneers have been wanting to do dance competitions for years now but were never given the opportunity to do so.
Lioneers also do practices after school like the cheerleaders. Two days a week, every week. Even during the summer, the Lioneers had practice every Tuesday and Thursday at 8 a.m. for a few hours. This continued until the school year started.
With the school not considering the Lioneers a sport, they were even going to let anyone join since it is considered a “club”. Not everyone can dance and if anyone could join, then the dances would not be good and put together very well. They even have tryouts held like the cheerleaders do and only let the best join and the people that actually do competitive dance outside of school.
Many people also consider dance not to be a sport, but doing dance is not easy. Everyone sport has one goal and that is to win whatever they are competing for. Dance is the exact same way, but sometimes even more. For instance, in football, they play one game every Friday and practice during the week.
Competitive dancers have practice every day of the week and have competitions for a full weekend long for multiple different weekends. Many sports go on for a couple months when in season and dance is the exact same way.
Both dance and cheerleading require skill, and sometimes dance can be even harder depending on the skill level of each individual. Both require flexibility, confidence, strength and a lot of focus when it comes to performing. So really there isn’t much of a difference between them.
Overall, the Lioneer Dance Team should be considered a sport and funded as one by the school. If the school can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Leader in Me, they should easily be able to help fund for the Lioneers.
