Senior Haylie Gray has been dancing since she was three years old. In kindergarten, her mom made her sign up for an activity and she chose to continue dancing. Gray loved it, and that sparked her interest to try other things. But dance is something that Gray keeps coming back to. 

Gray started out with ballet, then went to jazz and tap dance. In the fifth grade, she was asked to join a modern dance class with high school students. “That was pretty cool,” she said. 

In the ninth grade, she started going to a competitive dance studio. There, she did tap, jazz, ballet, hip-hop, and contemporary dance. But her favorite type of dance is “hip-hop and jazz, things that are energetic and you have to be happy and entertain the audience.” 

Gray’s dance career at La Salle has spanned over three years. She has been dancing since her freshman year, but took her junior year off. Now, she is one of the senior co-captains of the team. 

“Our team has grown so much since we just started four years ago,” Gray said. “We had like eight dancers and now there’s almost thirty of us.”

Having so many people on the team is a little difficult but when competitions start happening, they plan on splitting into a JV and varsity team. And, “having thirty dancers is really exciting and we always want more people in the program,” she said. 

Balancing schoolwork and dance hasn’t been too difficult for her this year. Gray’s freshman year was more of struggle, with fifteen hours a week including her weekends, full of dance. This year, she’s only dancing about eight hours a week. 

The season right now has been going well and so far the team “seems like we’ve been really well received.” A goal for this season was for La Salle’s dance team to compete and rival those of larger schools. COVID-19 hit the bigger programs harder and shrunk their teams, while La Salle’s only grew larger in number. 

“I think we’ll get to compete a little more and actually be, I don’t know, a little more of a threat,” she said.

As this is her last year at La Salle, it’s a little bit emotional. “This could be my last year of dance ever,” she said. “I hope it’s not, but it might be.”

It’s also hard because Gray has been dancing with some of her teammates for four years. She also helped grow this team into what it is now. “It makes me proud and emotional,” she said.