After two successful weekends of competition, the Celebrities will head to Nationals in Galveston on Mar. 24-26. Their preceding dance meets were located in Waco and at Vandegrift High School, where the team won an abundance of awards.

“This season has been so rewarding,” senior Celebrities captain Hannah McQueen said. “We put in so much work into 2-3 minute routines, so it’s great to see all the hours of before and after school work pay off.”

The Celebrity officers won first in each of their dances in Waco and also had multiple finalists and first place winners, while at Vandegrift, the team’s ensembles took first, second and third.

“We did super awesome at both of our competitions,” junior line officer Gracie Walker said. “We still have nationals at the end of March, but our two competitions were very successful.”

To prepare for Nationals, the Celebrities are using their scores and feedback from regional contests to tweak their routines to improve their future scores and remain competitive.

“With these changes and addition of new routines to compete, the next month will be filled with a lot of ‘polishing’ practices,” McQueen said. “For the non-dancers out there, polishing is how we practice dancing at the same time and in the same way.”

Normally following competition season, the team goes straight into Spring Show and starts working on routines, but since they’re going to Nationals, that is their main focus right now.

“We’re jumping into this season with a little more on our plate but also with more energy in anticipation of the upcoming events this spring,” McQueen said.

Right after football season ended, the Celebs started learning more routines, and for the past couple of months they have had several after school practices and morning practices on top of their class period in order to get them ready for competition.

“The highlight of the competition was hanging out and performing with the team,” senior first lieutenant Claire Dunne said. “It’s so rewarding to see all our hard work pay off each time we perform.”

Being able to juggle school and practice together can be a challenge, but Dunne said she made it work.

“Sometimes it was hard to manage the extra practices on top of school work, but I really enjoyed it because competition season is one of my favorite times of year,” Dunn said.

The team dedicated a dance to their director, Stacy Danielson, who was diagnosed with colon cancer, and received a WOW award for their performance. The WOW award is a special award only given to very few recipients whose performances stuck out.

“I was so happy that we got to [perform the dance] again for everyone to see our passion and our purpose behind dancing,” Walker said.