Mead dance/drill wins first place in national meet

The Mead High School Panther Golden Girls dance and drill team has traveled a long way this school year, and it recently returned to Spokane with some new hardware for its trophy cases.

The group of 32 girls competed in the United Spirit Association’s national championship on March 24 in Anaheim, Calif. Mead won first place in the dance/drill competition, second in the dance competition, third in the kick competition and fourth in the drill competition.

The group’s coach, Tonya Axworthy, said the girls have performed at several competitions this year, including one in Auburn, Wash., and one at Mt. Spokane High School.

They practice more than three hours a week and know seven routines.

Axworthy submitted a video of the group, which was judged and evaluated to qualify for the tournament.

“Any team has the opportunity to go,” Axworthy said. She compared it with other national championships in which teams must qualify to compete.

Mead was competing against 125 teams from Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada and California.

“We were really excited to beat Richland,” Axworthy said of a school in the Tri-Cities. “Whenever we run into them, we usually don’t beat them.”

The girls hold fundraisers throughout the school year to pay for costumes and to travel to competitions. They sell cookie dough, hold a dance clinic for elementary school girls in the area, host their own competition and perform at the Dance Team Spring Show Final at their school. This year’s spring show will be June 1 at 7 p.m. in the school’s gymnasium.

Axworthy said the first-place trophy was a huge surprise for her and the team. The girls had learned the routine only a month before and hadn’t performed it much before the competition.

“It was the one routine we took for fun,” she said.

The routine included dance moves to a song from the soundtrack of the movie “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

These days in drill team competitions, the overall effect of the music, dancing and costumes don’t necessarily match the school colors.

“You really have to accommodate costumes for effect,” Axworthy said.

The girls didn’t work the whole time they were in California. They spent some time at Disneyland, Universal Studios and the Santa Monica pier.

But the highlight of the trip for Axworthy was “seeing their expressions when they won first place.”

The girls enjoyed spending time with their teammates and performing.

“Being on stage in front of everyone” was ninth-grader Paisley Best’s highlight of the trip.

Andrea Stephens, captain of the team and a senior, said her favorite part was the rush she experienced when finding out the team had won.

“Everyone went crazy when we won,” Siri Hafso, a 10th-grader, agreed. “We really came together as a team.”