Wake up at 6 a.m., put on your workout clothes, tie your hair back and set out to go to the gym. Not the gym with weights and machinery, but rather the West gymnasium that is used every day, sometimes for nearly three hours at a time, as a dance studio for our dance team.

Three years ago, the Olathe West dance team first went to nationals, and that commitment still remains as the team heads back again Wednesday, March 6.

The commitment to competing and going to nationals takes a lot of time, sweat and dedication as senior Lilian Mannis has done for three years.

“[Nationals is] a lot of dedication and just like a lot of hard work and it takes a lot of like encouragement from the team,” Mannis said.

Going to nationals can sometimes be nerve-racking, but this isn’t senior Emmy Harkrader’s first time either.

“We leave Wednesday the 6th, and then we will be traveling to Orlando and then we have a pool day,” Harkrader said. “Thursday, we’re going to Universal and then we have a practice that night. Friday [and] Saturday, are prelims for dances so we have three of them. And then Sunday is finals if we make it.”

Once every school performs their preliminary dances, the teams wait to hear their school called. If their name gets called, then they qualify for finals.

Freshman Jazlyn Zuniga is one of five freshmen out of 26 students on the varsity dance team going to nationals.

“We’re taking three routines [to nationals],” Zuniga said. “We’re taking a pom routine and jazz routine, and then a game day routine. And we learned them almost this time last year.”

Even though the dance team has taken nearly a year to learn the three routines, time isn’t enough to gain a name for themselves.

“We’ve had to work really hard, because [with] West people think that we’re just like an average school, but we’ve gotten a lot better,” Zuniga said. “So we’ve had to work really hard to prove ourselves, like a lot of the other teams. So everyone’s been putting in a lot of hard work so that we could get to where we are now.”