Bayport-Blue Point High School recently launched a competitive dance team, allowing students who often rehearse in private studios outside of school to perform as an official athletics team in the school district.
About 11 girls from different grade levels helped create the inaugural season of the Bayport-Blue Point dance team, which performed routines at halftime during the varsity football and basketball games throughout the fall and early winter.
For years, middle and high school students who dance at private studios outside of class have wanted to wear their moves while proudly displaying the Bayport-Blue Point insignia, competitive dance coaches and elementary teachers, Kristen Rang and Bailey Whitney said.
“The one thing that I always heard for years is that we just wish we could represent the school,” Rang said. “They always wanted that representative.”
The dancers began their season at the start of the school year, with each girl leading the way as they rehearsed, nailed down their parts, and experimented with genres like jazz and hip-hop. The team is choreographed by Bayport-Blue Point alum Sarah Woolsey and Rachel Marchione from the Releve Dance Centre.
“Once we started, we just got right into it, because the girls were so excited and took the initiative,” Whitney said. “They’re the ones who are like, ‘Can we have an extra practice? Can we have a longer practice?’ They’re so invested and so proud.”
Along with teaching art at Blue Point Elementary School, Whitney choreographs musicals at Bayport-Blue Point High School, where she heard from a former student who wanted to create a dance club for a Girl Scout Gold Award.
As word spread across the high school and even middle school about a potential dance activity, students, including Rang’s daughter, Emma, came together to ask the school administration to let them form an athletic team to dance.
As part of the dance world with her daughter, Rang joined her, the other girls, and Whitney to create the district’s first competitive dance team.
“Something that I loved about starting this dance team was it gave opportunity to dancers that don’t get time to compete at their studio,” said team member Ava Stumpf. “It also gave us an opportunity to prove to people that dance is actually hard and dance is something worth paying attention to, because a lot of times dancers are underestimated for how hard they work and for, like, how much of their life they give away to dance.”
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