When coming to a large school such as Redwood, with almost 2,000 students, it can be difficult to find a community or your niche. Oftentimes, joining a sports team offers a sense of belonging in a big school. In fact, as there are over 19 sports offered, ranging from golf to field hockey, to basketball, you’d think there would be a place for everyone. However, as a student scrolling through all the options of sports on the Redwood website, there is one consistently missing. Dancers have no sport to choose from, making them unable to join a school team. Therefore, Redwood should create a dance team so dancers have a place to belong.

The number of dance teams at high schools in the U.S. is alarmingly low. According to the Arts Education Data Project, only 15 percent of high schools offer dance teams as an official school sport, making a sport that many love very inaccessible. For families, this can pose a significant challenge, since many cannot afford to participate in extracurricular sports outside of school. This issue is particularly relevant to Marin, where there are a limited number of dance studios, often with a high cost. As a dancer myself, I have witnessed how financial reasons have prevented many dancers from continuing their passion. Many are forced to quit and leave their sport because of the high fees imposed by dance studios. If a dance team was offered as a sport at Redwood, it would allow teenagers to continue their love for dance free of cost.

Additionally, dance has many benefits to one’s mental and physical health as explained by the Mental Health Association in Delaware. It improves people’s mood by releasing endorphins in our brains, producing a “feel good” response. This can help reduce anxiety, depression and improve self-esteem. An individual’s stress is reduced when they are dancing because the heart rate increases while exercising, reducing the amount of cortisol, a stress-causing hormone, in the brain. In addition to this, dancing is also beneficial for students because it helps sustain memory and improve cognitive functioning in the brain. Constantly having to remember choreography forces the brain to learn how to retain information. Having many benefits relating to brain functioning and memory, participating in dance can improve students’ lives from an academic standpoint as well.

One of Tamalpais Union High School District’s (TUHSD) high schools, Archie Williams, already has a dance team. Their team is very successful with a large turnout when they perform and a high participation of students on the team; that should be an inspiration to add the sport at the remaining TUHSD schools. They perform at sports games and rallies and always get the crowd to go wild. Here at Redwood, the team could perform at rallies and halftimes of sporting events, similar to Archie Williams. Additionally, the team could travel to competitions, as many are held in California and all high school teams are able to compete at a national level. Adding the competition aspect allows students to further their training and builds an internal drive to improve.

However, cheer is already offered as a sport for football and basketball season. While cheer does consist of dancing, almost all other aspects are different from a dance team. Cheer includes stunting, tumbling, jumps, memorizing sideline cheers and minimal choreography. Dance teams are almost the opposite, learning technically difficult choreography with turns, leaps and minimal tumbling. Cheer is much stiffer with stricter body movements, while dance has more movement and fluidity. It would be hard for a dancer to try out for cheer because the technical requirements are vastly different, making it difficult for a dancer to find a place within Redwood sports. According to a November Bark survey, 27 percent of students said that they would try out for a dance if Redwood offered it. This might seem like a small amount relative to other Redwood sports, but a dance team does not need very many people; a team can be as small as eight to 10 people.
Having a dance team can make Redwood sports more inclusive. Everyone should be able to have the opportunity to engage in a school sport and find something that they love no matter their financial situation. Dance offers a happiness incomparable to anything else and everyone should be able to experience that feeling.