This team’s goal for fall is to be laid back and have fun. That’s because their winter is all sorts of crazy.

by Norm Ramil, 8 Count Audio chief.music.officer & dance.fan

Nestled in the back of York’s sprawling building is what the locals call “The Black Box.” Technically, this is the school’s hybrid dance / theatre space, and you can see evidence of both activities throughout the room. First, there’s the brightly-lit central performing area surrounded on two sides by a darkened seating area. The setup reminds me of the smaller space at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. But you can tell it’s a dance room, too, with its mirror, marley floor, and ballet barres. If you put aside the theatre-ish look, the lighting and colors vaguely resemble the stage at IHSA State. You can easily get lost and absorbed into the little universe in this room (there’s just a single high window that lets in daylight), so dancers, actors, and audiences can easily focus on their art. Then again, the chlorine smell reminds you that dance sits alongside the other athletic teams at York Community High School.

I’m fashionably late thanks to my iPhone insisting that I try to park in the back of the school, followed by a maze-like parking lot in the front of the school. So I walk in a little concerned—Coach Kristen Baron mentioned in her questionnaire that she’s ultra-organized. “I enjoy being effective and efficient with my time,” explains Baron. Luckily I soon discover that the York Dance Team is in a laid-back mode for the next couple months, so practices like this one have a casual overtone.

Coach Kristen Baron explains to me that football season is casual because competition season is intense. She explains, “I try to give them a lot of freedom in fall as winter is grueling. Those three months take everything out of all of us.” Not that football season is devoid of effort. Different sets of girls get a shot at choreographing the football dances, and the captains and choreographers get to run practices. Halftime itself has plenty of excitement, as the poms team dances to the band, while the cheerleaders simultaneously do their stunts in the background.

They’re a jazz/lyrical team in winter, but for football, York knows their way around a kick line

The girls waver between calling themselves poms and a dance team. If anything, football season equals their poms persona for the seventeen girls on the roster: two seniors, five juniors, nine sophomores, and a freshman. Aside from three new dancers (three seniors graduated last spring), the entire team returns from last year’s 11th-place state team.

Coach Kristen Baron tells me that lyrical and jazz are York’s preferred styles, fueled by the active studio scene in and around Elmhurst. The girls have spent years crafting their skills at Dance Xplosion, Expression, Steppin’ Out, Beyond Center Stage, Aspire, and Impact. She playfully refers to the “bunheads” on the team who, after practice, spend most of the rest of the evening in dance classes at their studios. It’s a team full of girls who do what they love, all the time. One downside is that with so much constant studio training, it’s hard to put aside the solo mindset and execute as one unit. On top of that, each studio and teacher might do things just a little differently from each other. Plus, 1st Position in ballet means a different thing on a dance team.

The girls come in without having had the benefit of being on a poms team in middle school, though I bet most of them got a taste of dance team life through York’s annual K-8 pom clinic. It’s a chance for girls to perform a basketball halftime routine with the York Dance Team. All of these experiences and knowledge gets tested during tryouts. Getting on this team requires the usual menu of skills (quads, triples, splits, an assortment of leaps and jumps, seconde turns), a tryout dance, and—this is cool—improvisation.

York’s summer didn’t involve a road trip. Instead, the team had a home camp featuring professional instructors from the Chicago area. The girls have a summer pool party and team dinner, as well. The dance parents handle lots of the social activities deeper into the year, especially during the competition months and basketball activities. “Team-building comes naturally for them,” notes Coach Baron, as the girls go through the familiar fall rhythm of football games, team outings, and the pep assembly. “They dance for so many hours together that that becomes team-building! They support each other and grow together each time they dance,” she says. Besides the natural fun and memories made during football nights and long days of competition, the girls take time to think out loud. “We have a lot of beneficial talks and inspirational huddles each season that bonds us forever,” reveals their coach.

Sunset calls for sunglasses for York’s first home football game

For all the intensity waiting for them after the competition roster is set in late October, I can tell that this group enjoys just being a fall poms unit. Warmups, stretches, and across-the-floors soon give way to the halftime dances at this practice. The girls take pride in aligning their kick line with precision and keeping it timed with a recorded band performance blasting from the speakers.

York focuses on one competition routine each year alongside five game dances. Coach Baron, the two captains, and two outside choreographers put their minds together to compose the competition dance. It’s that one dance that calls for a “very routine and strict” practice regimen, according to the dance-degreed coach. Captains lead warmups, which go on for 30 to 45 minutes, followed by reviewing the last practice (individually or as a team). The team marks the dance one or two times before they launch into full run-throughs. Coach Baron takes notes and makes adjustments after each run.

The girls don’t have to worry about sideline dances during basketball—the gym isn’t big enough to accommodate that. Yes, they’ll take the floor for a halftime performance, but for the most part, the actual poms get put in storage once football season wraps up.

Also gone in the winter is the laid back vibe. “We often drill turns until every dancer nailed them perfectly. This could last one take, and sometimes 13 takes!” writes Coach Baron. The team practices on the day of competitions, so their minds are already in the right mode when their bus pulls up to the contest site. But the dancers also stay loose as a way to balance their weekday intensity, making time for some organized fun on competition days.

So about that weekday intensity…

“There is no talking at any practices, none! Dancers raise their hands to speak. Captains or myself have the floor,” says Coach Baron. She often assigns team homework, and thankfully it’s not just busy-work; it’s legit stuff that helps her dancers think their way up to the next level. Baron is also handy with her phone’s video features, since film is an essential learning tool in this classroom.

If all of this sounds pretty hardcore, that’s because it is.

The York dancers take a second to regroup while practicing a halftime routine

It’s hard to get practice time in the gym on a traditional basketball floor, though the York Poms manage to snag it as needed during the winter. For the most part, this odd room is their dance headquarters, and that’s super-ironic because the sounds of basketballs, old-school sneakers, and cheering fans once filled this room nearly a century ago. The Black Box Dance Studio / Theatre is actually York’s original gym, something like 98 years old. It’s already the coolest dance space I’ve ever seen, but it could be the one of the most fascinating school rooms I’ve set foot in. The former bleachers (now theatre seating) are painted black to keep the lighting right for performances, and they just add to the slightly eerie and ultra-stylish vibe of this place. The seats are way up in that “old timey” style, and they’re an ideal spot for Coach Baron to monitor formations and yell out adjustments during winter practices.

Teaching dance in a hands-on style matches Baron’s own college experience. At Iowa, she melted into the background of big dance classes on an already huge campus. After transferring to Northern Illinois, she benefited from the personal attention of smaller classes where the profs could provide more consistent, personal feedback.

Baron teaches yoga at York; she says that otherwise, her day would consist of teaching dance, coaching the dance team, and then more dance work with her performance company at night! Besides holding a dance degree, Baron also owns Meraki Dance Company, an adult professional contemporary company in the Chicagoland area. It’s more than an administrative role—she’s also the company’s artistic director. As a dancer on Lockport Poms back in the day, she helped win a state title in IDTA’s ’99-’00 season. Baron always knew that dance would be part of daily life, and coaching was always on her radar. After coaching Plainfield North’s dance team, she moved on to York and now is in her second year as head coach. She arrived at just the right moment. York’s dance program had plenty of talent but needed a technically trained dance coach to make it all work. The changes that Baron brought to York Dance showed quick results, so her AD gives her plenty of discretion and the parents appreciate the quality.

The York Poms are on track for another run at IHSA state

With her, it’s almost all business: “I believe in running a very tight ship in an organized and productive manner.” But then there’s that yoga side again. “I focus on the things that count and let the little things go.” So it’s not a surprise that it’s hard to find any drama issues on this team. According to junior and captain Annemarie, “She’s like a mom to all of us and gets us back under control and we respect that…we’re all on the same page.”

It doesn’t hurt that York is a school known for high-achievers, many with an artsy side. She credits her dancers with a high level of maturity and passion about what they do. Moreover, the enthusiastic support from the athletic department lets the team keep any fundraising off of their already busy schedule.

The team’s goal isn’t a certain size of trophy, or a specific number next to their name on the scoresheet. All they want is “to perform well at invites and exude readiness,” according to Coach Baron. In the end, her main criterion is, “Did you evoke feeling?” in the dance performance. This explains how the team didn’t drown in sorrow after finishing 11th last January. For them, the performance and the experience mattered way more than the placement. “We would be blessed if we made it to State again this year,” admits the cerebral coach.

The York Dance program is set to grow stronger over time. A deliberate age gap between the captains helps to smooth the continuity of leadership from year to year. In the past, up to six captains had a grip on the steering wheel, and Coach Baron recalls it was something of an organizational disaster. Also helping build for the future are the high-quality freshman dancers who stay on JV as sophomores in order to keep that team strong for incoming teammates. JV Dance is only a recent thing at York. JV Coach Alyssa Ortiz oversees the JV program and also handles its music editing. Coach Baron especially values her technical expertise, dance college resumé, and status as a York Dance Team alum.

Coach Baron knows what it’s like to win a state championship as a dancer, and she hopes the girls on the other side of this barre get to experience the same feeling

Baron has noted the essential elements and formulas that top teams use to excel at competitions, and she hopes to get her own team to that point one day. But the girls are aware that they’re not that far off. After all, they train at the same studios as high-achieving teams like Lake Park, Glenbard North, and Wheaton Warrenville South—so ultimately, her dancers already have the right tools within them.

Maybe the fall version of the York Poms is the calm before the storm…the one that transforms them into the York Dance Team. And maybe this ancient gym loves hosting wintertime athletic intensity like it did a hundred years ago. Hard work is on the horizon, but when you love to dance as much as these girls do, it’s not really work at all.

I had the chance to talk with a few of the dancers (Coach calls them her “squirrels” because, in her words, “They’re so goofy”) while the rest of the team tweaked a halftime dance:

Bella (SO.) has danced at Dance Xplosion in Bloomingdale for the past three years. She’s wanted to be on this team since middle school. She’s a fan of jazz (because it’s upbeat and fun) and lyrical (because it’s all about expressing yourself). Going to state last year as a freshman was an amazing experience, and she hadn’t expected to have so much fun bonding with her teammates. Besides getting back to state, Bella specifically wants to place in the top half of the qualifiers at regionals.

Norah (SO.) started dancing at age 2, and counts 9 years of competitive experience with Steppin’ Out at DeForest Dance Studio in Elmhurst. Jazz was her fave when she was younger, but lately she’s been into contemporary dance. She loved working with everyone on the team last year, citing how supportive and fun her teammates were. But she understands the hard part of dancing on this team—the long hours, pushing each other, and the sheer difficulty of their work. She likes watching what other teams bring to competition: “There’s something to learn from everyone out there, their own style that you can learn from.”

Demi (SO.) was into gymnastics, tried a dance class, and liked it so much that she’s now a 6-year dance veteran at Steppin’ Out. She prefers the uptempo style of jazz routines over lyrical / contemporary. Her cherished memory from last year was spending time with her team at the hotel at state, even when they weren’t doing anything! Coming up a little short at state gave her a lot to think about through the spring and summer—“What was it…one more pointed toe?” she wonders. But it’s a huge motivation to work hard this season. She’s counting on her team’s technical strengths, though it can be hard to match each other because of the different studios her teammates attend. Demi sometimes breaks out her gymnastics skills for halftime dances but not for competition. When away from dance she’s got country coming out of her speakers.

Alyssa (SR.) is still adjusting to the novelty of being in her last year on the team. She remembers being a freshman on a varsity team that had only eight dancers. She can boast that she’s been a part of York Dance Team’s transition from bad to good to great over the years. The variety of ages on this team is a plus—it’s a chance for her to be a role model. Her dance resume at DeForest Dance Studio includes jazz, lyrical, and tap. Alyssa’s got a senior’s mindset: her goal is to focus not just on the dancing, but to enjoy the whole experience and take it all in. If she had the power to change one thing, it would be to get categories back into the competition rules…but for now, she just chills with classical music and jazz. Dance is up in the air for next year, but she’ll probably be teaching like she already does at her studio.

Mia (SR.) loves how super-close her team is. “All the girls are supportive and super nice” with a shared sense of humor, she says. She first danced when she was 2, and has learned at three studios, most recently at Dance Xplosion in Bloomingdale. Right now she’s solely focused on her poms team as its senior captain. Hip hop, tap, modern, jazz—it’s all good in her book. Mia’s fave moment from last year was coming home 11th, and while she gets that some people would be disappointed, she prefers to compare it to finishing 28th her freshman year. She gives tons of credit to Coach Baron for elevating York Dance. Besides choreography, Mia likes to scope out new music for the team, editing it and shaping it into routines. She keeps a balanced way of looking at her team, keeping in mind what they can do and that they can do a lot. For the skills that at first seem to be a stretch for them, she’s proud of how they can just try it out and get it 99% of the time.

Annemarie (JR.) started on this team as a freshman. She’s danced since she was 2 and started competing at DeForest when she was 8. Contemporary is her fave dance style. She says it’s been awesome to be part of the rise of this dance program, pinning lots of the credit on Coach Baron’s arrival. She’s wanted to be on the team since her middle school years when she’d go to the York football games. Last season was the first time she felt they really had a shot at dancing on Day 2 at state, so this year, the junior captain wants to get it done for the seniors on her team.