Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
The Shelton High School dance team performs earlier this year at the Mini-Dome.
The Shelton High School dance team will be competing in the state competition Saturday at the Yakima SunDome.
Competition begins at 12:30 p.m., and Shelton is scheduled to dance 16th in set five with their military routine and will dance its pom routine 65th in set 22, shortly after a 40-minute dinner break.
The Highclimber dance team has had an excellent season so far, finishing first or second in most of the competitions.
The team has competed against all levels of classification, so the high finishes speak volumes.
The team has 17 dancers, including six seniors. Coach Madison Johnson-Crow highlighted Zoe Salas and Kennadi Ward as co-captains. Salas has choreographed and directed each piece and Ward assists with choreography and getting things prepared and cleaned up prior to performances and competitions.
The pom performance includes pom poms, and the military performance includes strong, powerful uniform movements.
"It is the first time in a long time Shelton has taken two routines to the state competition," Johnson-Crow said. "It's a huge accomplishment and I'm super proud of them because throughout the season, they've lost a coach and have really persevered and maintained a high level of technique and skill and kept pushing for bigger and better, which is super exciting. Usually, when teams experience a loss of a coach, they hit a lull and they haven't done that so it's pretty cool."
The coach that was hired at the start of the year resigned in December, and Johnson-Crow and others have stepped up to keep the team going. Johnson-Crow is a former Shelton dance team member and was the senior captain in 2012. She was the coach during the COVID season last year and is filling in on an interim basis, but she thinks it's cool that it has come full circle being the coach of a team she was once a member of.
"It's exciting. It's actually my 10-year reunion this year," Johnson-Crow said. "I've been getting a lot of highlight memories from my senior year because I graduated 2012 so it's been fun to relive some moments like us heading off to state and doing a few other things with the team, it's been fun."
The team finished second at districts in both pom and military and has been making some last-minute changes and incorporating judging notes to fine-tune the routines before Saturday. The team has been performing the same routines all season with changes and tweaks throughout the year.
"It would be fun to bring home a trophy, but happy dancers are fun too, so we're just looking to have a good time and show the rest of the teams what we're bringing," Johnson-Crow said. "Go Climbers."
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