Burncoat High School's Spirit Team to go to national competition in Florida this weekend

UPDATE: Burncoat placed third in the Varsity Game Day Live category.

WORCESTER - Burncoat High School Dance Team captain Tess Lambert and her team rushed a stage full of Burncoat High School Pep Band members in the auditorium at Worcester Technical High School. The musicians moved in formations around the stage as the dancers performed their routines. The session marks one of the final rehearsals before they fly to Orlando, Florida, for a national competition.

"I think with dance we're getting more and more excited not just for ourselves but for band," Lambert, a senior at Burncoat, said. "They've never been before so getting to experience it with them for the first time is just so exciting."

The Burncoat High School Spirit Team will compete in the upcoming Universal Dance Association competition at the Disney World Resort in Orlando. The Spirit Team includes the Burncoat Dance Team and Burncoat Pep Band.

"We've gotten to see how (the band) learns and how they get to be as amazing as they are," Lambert said. "We've learned from both teaching styles and I think it's helped a lot."

When the team arrives at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney World this weekend, it will compete against thousands of other dance teams from high schools around the country, with the entire show broadcast on TV.

The Burncoat Dance Team attended nationals last year and placed as semifinalists at the National Dance Team Championship. The team made it one round further into the competition than it had the year before. This year it wants to advance even further.

The team's preparation this year was a little different. Instead of performing to a set track, the team will perform with the Burncoat Pep Band for the first time in a category called "game day live." This routine is similar to one the team does during a halftime show. Burncoat's Spirit Team will be the only team from the Northeast to compete at the national level in the game day live category.

"(The routine is) up to five minutes long, whereas our normal dance routines we're used to competing in are two minutes long," Burncoat Dance Team's head coach Kellie Shea said. "This is a whole different ballgame."

The weekend-long event includes competing in three rounds: preliminaries, semifinals and the final round for each category. The varsity team will compete in the jazz and hip-hop categories. The junior varsity team will compete in the pom category for the first time.

The trip for the 58-member team plus coaches will cost more than $100,000. The team has raised about $75,000 of it. That team has 22 dance team members and 36 band members, and Shea, said only eight have attended nationals before this year.

Shea said the team feels confident because of the hard work and preparation it has put into perfecting its routines, practicing six days a week, three of the days with the band. Additionally, it performs at every football and basketball game.

The team has qualified for the national competition for the past four years and participated in every one of them besides the competition in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"This is the first time ever we combined with our pep band at Burncoat," Shea said. "The performance recreates what goes on at a football game. It emulates like a halftime performance."

At one part of the routine, drum major Tiffany Vuong jogs in front of the performers and does a front flip. The band performs its school's fight song and other songs it plays at its football game halftime shows.

The team choreographed its game-day and pom routines in-house and worked with professional choreographers on jazz and hip-hop routines.

Choreographer Karl Mundt returned to work with the team on its jazz routine and was part of the choreography team for the 2011 Super Bowl halftime show featuring Usher and the Black Eyed Peas. He has experience with college dance teams like Brigham Young University and the University of Iowa.

Choreographer Michelle Vaughn worked with the team on its hip-hop routine. Vaughn previously worked with NFL, NBA and college dance teams.

First time Burncoat's Pep Band goes to nationals

Burncoat's Pep Band will take the national stage for the first time this weekend. For some students, it is their first time traveling on an airplane.

The dance team and pep band work together throughout the school year performing and practicing routines. This year, the band and dance team have worked even closer and Vuong said both teams formed strong bonds with each other.

"We share a wing (at school), but that was kind of it," Vuong said. "But now I think we see each other as one big team that's collaborative and uniform."

Lambert and Vuong are excited to showcase their skills this weekend as they reflect on their collaborative learning experience.

"It's just so exciting to be able to show nationals what we have because this is our first time working together," Lambert said. "I think we've come so far. We've gotten to be great friends. I think we're ready to show everybody what we can do when you bring music and dance together."

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Burncoat High School's Spirit Team goes to national competition