"Dance isn't a sport"

We always talk about sports like basketball, football, baseball, volleyball, etc., but when Dance is brought up, there seems to be some controversy over whether or not dance is considered a sport. I don't think there is a clear definition on what makes an activity a sport. Sports required strength, both physically and mentally, practice, stamina, all things that are involved in dance. Personally I consider dance a sport, but you might think that my opinion is bias because I am a dancer. Dance requires strength, we use muscles no other sport uses. We have to have mental strength as well. Our routines are up to two minutes long and they are anything but easy.

I hate when people think dance is easy and they say that because we "make it look easy" but that's because we have been doing this our whole lives, training our whole lives, we train to make it look easy. Dance Team spends numerous hours a week learning, changing, and perfecting dances. In a week we spend anywhere from 6-30 hours practicing two routines. Now you might ask how we could spend that long doing only two routines, but a lot more work goes into these dances then you might think. We spend hours "cleaning" people and parts so that everyone looks the EXACT same. Every arm, every leg, every head, every body angle has to be the same for every part of the dance, if you want to be the best. If one person doesn't match, they will stand out and throw off the whole "picture". We spend all this time being picky and making sure people match, because that is part of what we are judged on. If you were to take a picture in the middle of our dance, every single person should look the same and the spacing should all be even, but this is not always the case.

I wish we could have people come and watch out practices and see how much time and effort we put into making our dances look good. This past weekend, the dance team had their first competition at the Carver Hawkeye Area in Iowa city. This wasn't a huge competition, it was more like practice for state, but that doesn't mean we didn't take it seriously. The team went out there and gave it 110% and they killed it. We came out of the competition with a first place trophy for our pom and our jazz! All of our hard work paid off and the judges gave us great feedback and critiques that we will use and consider when preparing for state.

Dance team has all the qualities as any other sport; we compete just like any other sport. Dance team is just as hard as any other sport. If you don't believe me, then ask any other member of the dance team and I can guarantee you that they say the exact same thing.