Oak Park High School will host its 4th annual showdown on Nov. 15 at 6 PM at the OPHS gym. In the meantime, the dance, cheer, and fall-athletic teams have been tasked with coming together to create a mini-half time show to earn the praise of the judges and audience to potentially win the cash prize.
This year, the dance and cheer teams are collaborating with the girls tennis team.
Junior Katie Comparato, a varsity dance member and one of the leads for the team shared how they selected the theme: Canadian pop-singer and dancer, Tate McRae.
“Since we have a girls group, we wanted to have, like, a girly, fun feminine dance,” Comparato said.
The process of choreographing and planning the dance was efficient; perfecting one section, before moving forward.
“Before we went to rehearsals, we would warm up, we would split the songs for each of us and make a little choreo,” sophomore, varsity on dance, and the other lead for the team, Leanne Amir said. “Teach them that and clean it, make formations.”
Some difficult aspects of Showdown practices were motivation and communication. But thanks to the team’s goal-driven girls, their discipline is stronger than their motivation. Regarding the dance, memorizing and execution were the hardest parts.
“I think the challenge plays a part into it where sometimes it was hard for them to keep up,” Comparato said. “But I think practice really helps.”
From a tennis player’s perspective, memorizing was a bit trickier.
“I think [the dance is] easy. The acting is easy. We just have to memorize a lot,” freshman and member of JV tennis, Eloise An said.
The best parts of showdown practice were the new friendships made.
“I love the bonding aspects,” Comparato said. “Like, I didn’t know a lot of these girls, but now I’m getting to know them, which is really fun. Just getting to know how they are in their sport and [helping to] translate that into dance is so fun. Also, just to be with people my age where we’re like leading a whole thing is pretty cool.”
The team’s dance leads are excited to showcase their dance to the public.
“I’m looking forward to the actual performance—the second we have everything pretty much all set and so we just get to [relax] and have a fun time seeing other groups,” Amir said. “And I just love to perform, so I hope they do too.”
As freshman, in doubles JV tennis, with this being their first showdown, Zoe Zhi and An are nervous and excited.
“Yeah, both [excited and nervous] for sure,” said An. “Just because we don’t have a lot of people, it’s going to look kind of weird.”
The tennis players felt the same struggle the dance leads’ felt of getting everyone together for practice.
“It’s like really hard to get everyone together because people are out busy all the time,” An said.
The struggle for the tennis players has been the small number of members.
“Figuring out where people should go, because we only have six people,” Zhi said. “Three dancers and one cheerleader.”
Like any team, there are bound to be hurdles, but with the girls’ driven mentality, they are ready to give it their best. You can watch the Tate McRae group give their mini-halftime show this Saturday at the OPHS gym.
