{"id":10217,"date":"2011-10-30T19:04:21","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T02:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spiken.wpengine.com\/news\/dancing-for-the-love-of-the-sport-allison-needles\/"},"modified":"2016-10-21T21:30:46","modified_gmt":"2016-10-22T04:30:46","slug":"dancing-for-the-love-of-the-sport-allison-needles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/news\/dancing-for-the-love-of-the-sport-allison-needles\/","title":{"rendered":"Dancing for the love of the sport | Allison Needles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Name a sport. What\u2019s the first thing you think of? Maybe soccer, baseball, or football.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

While those are popular and talented sports, what many of you probably didn\u2019t think of is dance<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

There are controversies everywhere doubting that dance is even a sport in the first place. As a member of a dance team, I myself have faced a lot of these suspicions and doubts, especially from people in my high school.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

They all seem to wonder the same thing, and that\u2019s the question if dance is even hard.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

No one seems to know how rough our workouts are or if we even compete against other dance teams. It\u2019s hard to be a sport if there\u2019s no competition.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Since \u201cdance\u201d is a general term, doubters believe that anyone can dance and that it doesn\u2019t take much talent at all.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

What most people don\u2019t know, however, is the behind the scenes work on what it takes to be a dance team. A dance team is the same as a team of any other sport.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a collection of people who have the same passion for a certain thing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never experienced a group so tightly knit together as the dance team.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Relationships with our coaches are just as strong.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

We know that they are there not only to challenge us, but to guide us as well.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Every year we become like a second family, and sports teams need that quality in order to perform well.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

They need to know that they rely on each other, and dance teams possess that characteristic.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

As for the workouts, I feel sore just thinking about them. It\u2019s important to train every day, whether it\u2019s with your dance team or not.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Cardio endurance, flexibility, and muscle strength are essential for a dancer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to be able to keep up with the music, which can be tiring, so if you can\u2019t do that, you\u2019ll fall behind quickly.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Stretching is necessary for every movement of a dancer, but some specific examples are kicks or the splits.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Flexibility doesn\u2019t just happen overnight; it takes months or even years to be a flexible dancer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Our strength is needed to hold ourselves up in stalls in hip hop, or pirouettes in jazz or lyrical.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

No, we might not have the same workout as football players, but it\u2019s just as hard for our sport.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

We train until we become just as sore, and we\u2019re determined to keep going until we can be the best.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Yes, dance teams do complete against each other. It\u2019s not just performances in front of the school, like what most people see.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

There are competitions where teams are determined to win, just like any other sports team.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The effort we put into building relationships, fundraising for outfits, and training until the splits don\u2019t even break a sweat, affects our overall performance.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Because when we perform, we don\u2019t just dance.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

We dance to win.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Name a sport. What\u2019s the first thing you think of? Maybe soccer, baseball, or football.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-10217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10217"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}