Although the high school offers an advanced dance class, many students pursue dancing outside of school as means for physical exercise. Various forms of advanced dancing such as ballet, require great balance, graceful movements, and physical conditioning

Football is regarded by many as a sport that requires extreme physical conditioning, but even some of the worlds top athletes can not handle dancing. Pittsburgh Steelers nose tackle, Steve McLendon said, “It’s harder than anything else I do.” A comment like this coming from a professional athlete might turn the heads of some critics who do not regard dancing as a physical activity.

Junior Amanda Champion said that the school offers a very good dance program that all levels of dancers can benefit and choose various styles of dancing to pursue.

Champion began dancing when she was three and has been doing so since, as well as being involved in the schools program Champion dances outside of school. Champion said she spends three to five hours a week dancing outside of school.

“I still have time to do homework, it is not a ridiculous amount of time,” Champion said.

Champion said that she agrees that dancing provides a difficult workout. “You have to have strength as well as control, which is difficult to achieve.”  Champion does both ballet and contemporary styles of dance, both which require great physical conditioning to do well.

Senior Antoinette Navarro has been dancing for fourteen years, and danced with the high school during her freshman and sophomore year, but, decided to pursue dance exclusively for the past two years.

“I was more committed to my studio and the high schools dance class wasn’t advanced enough for me,” Navarro said.

Similar to Champion’s opinion, Navarro said that she agrees that dance requires a lot of physical strength.

“Dance requires a lot of strength such as leg and core strength to be able to do certain things. If you don’t have the strength its hard to do the difficult routines and a lot of time we tear muscles if we aren’t strong enough.”

Navarro said that dancing provides you with a lot of long-term achievements that a lot of other physical activities do not offer. Navarro said she has seen improvement over the years in perfecting difficult steps, that for a while she could not even do.

Navarro enjoys dancing very much and said “the best part about it is learning hard routines and getting to perform them with her team at various competitions.”

Senior Lauren Ratzer dances an average of 13 to 14 hours a week, which equates to more hours than most high school sports require from student athletes.

“I dance because I have done it since age two and love the friendships I have made as well as preforming in shows,” Ratzer said.