I’ve been a dancer for 13 years, and a competitive dancer for six years. This past 2022 competition season has been the best yet. My group won first place overall at every competition, besides one competition in which we placed third. There was one specific win that meant a lot to the team and felt even more victorious. 

This competition took place in Sandusky, Ohio, over Memorial Day weekend. The team stretched together and practiced the dance a couple times before going backstage to check in and get ready for the performance. We gave each other a pep talk backstage, and we all were ready to do our best. 

Once we got off stage, everyone talked with each other and we all were confident with our performance. The feedback we received from our dance teacher and from all of our families made us realize it was as good as we felt ourselves. All of the timing was perfect, our dance moves were executed amazingly, everything seemed to be perfect. 

We watched our competition; they were great dancers. From seeing how fantastic the dancers we were going up against were, we were totally doubting ourselves. We were in a huge city with people coming from everywhere. This dance competition had over 2000 dancers entered in it, and overall the competition was crazy challenging. 

We waited a few hours for the award ceremony to begin and we all made our way to the stage together. Music was playing, people were throwing out t-shirts and balls and other random items. Once the MC started announcing judications, we were all nervous. They announced the top 10 places. The speaker got to naming fourth place, we weren’t called. Then third place, we weren’t called. Second place, we still were not called. We were wondering if we didn’t even place at all. Then first place was announced, and it was us. This was such an accomplishment, way better than any of our other wins. We have won multiple times before this but this was just different due to the fact that we were competing against some of the best dancers we have ever gone up against.

We got off stage and celebrated with all of our families, took photos, and ended this competition weekend on a great win.