Team Feature: Lakes Community HS Dance Team
by Kaitlyn Winters, 8CA Staff Writer
[For her second feature article on 8 Count Audio’s blog, Grayslake North alum Kaitlyn keeps it in 2A, this time covering a North Suburban Conference team.]
The Lakes Community High School Dance Team has made their mark as a powerful team in the IHSA 2A division. The Varsity head coach, Tiffany Chilcote, had most of her dance training in dance team settings, including four years on the Antioch Dance Team, and time on the Miami University Shakerettes. She has now been coaching for six years, five of them spent at Lakes Community High School. Tiffany has led the team through many successful seasons, including a fourth place finish at IHSA state in 2015. Following such a strong season, Lakes graduated many senior dancers, leaving a primarily new to varsity team.
Against a wintry backdrop, Lakes practices their kick routine
While this is a big change, the team continues to have a very strong season with skilled and technical dancers. Many girls on the team keep their technical training up by attending studios in the area including Steps Dance Studio in Lindenhurst, Shine Bright Dance Studio in Antioch, and American Stars of Dance in Antioch and Lake Villa.
With such a large variety of dance backgrounds, the team spends a lot of their summer and fall working on conditioning and technique as well. Important skills that dancers need for this team include consistent triples, solid jumps, strong flexibility, grandes, and good kicks. All of these skills are used during competition season, especially in their always impressive kick routines. Additionally, tryouts require dancers to learn one routine with many different combined styles, to keep the team diverse in all dance styles.
The Lakes Dance Team’s repertoire goes way beyond just kick
Lakes has definitely become known for their kick routines, but they always bring two dances to the competition scene initially in the winter season. The dance style for their second routine often varies based on what the girls will have the most fun performing that season. Since IHSA dance competitions can be difficult to gauge, LCHS does not determine what style to dance based on scores and results, but what will make the team members enjoy their time dancing the most.
This year, they brought a hip hop routine in addition to their Irish themed kick number. Both of the routines are completely original, choreographed by the head coach after a long period of planning. As the season continues, improvements are constantly being made to these routines at practice, including large changes to the choreography at times.
Kick is kind of a rare sight in IHSA competition, but Lakes counts it as their specialty
At a typical practice, the team will warm up and do a long stretch to make sure they are ready to kick. They also have access to use their school’s weight room once a week for conditioning. Following their warm ups, they drill technical skills from the routine such as turn and kick sequences, and then dive into improving and cleaning their routine.
The dancers at Lakes are extremely hard working and dedicated, and have overcome many obstacles including challenges with practice space. Even though they do not normally have a dance room or gym to rehearse in, the girls do not complain and always come to competition strong and ready to compete. Obstacles make them stronger as a team on and off the floor, and they feel that their team has a genuine sense of sisterhood since they spend so much time growing both individually and as a team together.
Lakes Dance Team in mid-formation-change
Fun Facts
School Info:
Their mascot is the Eagles and their colors are blue and white.
Team Composition:
The team consists of four seniors, ten juniors, four sophomores, and one freshman. Ten of the girls are new to varsity this year.
Teams they admire:
The girls at Lakes are very close with many teams in the area, including Warren and Grant. They also are always proud of their sister school, Antioch, for their performances and the things that they overcome. Also, they greatly admire Geneva for their consistency and ability to make their routines look easy, even though they have very challenging skills and choreography.
Special Skills/ Trademarks:
LCHS is known for their strong kick routines and creative concepts.
Team facts:
The girls on the varsity dance team look at their team as very diverse in many aspects. In a dance sense, they come from many different backgrounds, including gymnasts, studio dancers, and self taught dancers. In another sense, they have great ethnic diversity on their team, something they are very proud of. The Lakes Dance Team also seems to always be a team that comes up from behind, starting the season as an underdog and ultimately proving their talent.