The Simpson College Dance team scored a victory at the Spring 2021 virtual National Dance Association competition. The team held a small event before Simpson’s football home opener to celebrate.

The dance team competed in the virtual competition in the open division against other colleges competing virtually in the Pom and Hip-Hop categories.

Head coach Lindsay Kline, along with the team, worked hard in preparation for the competition, leading them to their first-place victory. 

“Most of our practice just focused on cleaning up any mistakes, or we would take feedback from previous competitions and incorporate that feedback,” Kline said.

Kline’s practices weren’t always easy. 

“Something that our coach actually made us do was she would make us do a routine full out, give us like 30 seconds of a break, and then made us do it full out again. And that was just like building up our stamina,” sophomore Megan Hall said. 

Due to covid, practices were a struggle. Between practicing in pods and with masks, it made their season a lot harder. 

“Sometimes we were on zoom, and dancing in a dorm room isn’t exactly easy,” junior Makenna Mullin said.

And when practicing, dancers found themselves improvising.

“In pom, we would practice with water bottles instead of poms first so it would make poms easier to use,” Mullin said.

“There’s nobody in the crowd, which is always difficult, because you kind of feed off of the energy of the people in the audience and clapping and them cheering for you,” Kline said. “And when you don’t have that, it’s definitely hard to get that performance aspect of it.”

Learning the results of the competition made the team realize that their hard work was worth it. 

“And then just being able, like knowing that every single person in that room contributed to that. It was just a really special moment, I would, what I would use to describe is the word like proud. I was just so proud of us,” Hall said.