By: Eileen Jaksik
The Pleasanton Pacesetters with Albert Ruiz.
On Thursday, July 30th the Pleasanton High School Pacesetters started their summer dance camp at home in our Pleasanton PAC gym. The Pacesetter camp was a sum of two days, each day the practice lasted a whopping 7-8 hours. The Pleasanton Pacesetters learned a total of three dances, they relearned a competition pom, which is a jazz style of dance with pom poms, the dance is from the previous year to the song “light it up”, a hip hop pep rally dance, and they learned a competition novelty dance to “Just Can’t Wait to be King.” The Pleasanton Pacesetters had help learning these routines from the amazing Albert Ruiz. They learned an original routine, but decided to correct much of the choreography in the span of two whole days.
This year the Pleasanton Pacesetters have 5 new officers leading and helping their team, Colonel Kaylie Stratton, Lieutenant Colonel Alexandra Luna, Major Milagros Garcia, Lieutenant Briana Aguirre, and Sergeant Kaitlyn Allen. The new Pacesetter Officers had to not only take care of and worry about themselves, but they also had to learn how to worry and take care of the other Pacesetters at the same time. The officers had to help the new team members coordinate their team outfits and they set up sisterly events to help make the team more comfortable around each other. The new officers did very well according to Mrs. DeWaal, “They did exceptionally well, especially for the majority being first time officers.”
The Pleasanton Pacesetters attended camp during the Covid-19 virus. They wore face masks and stayed six-feet apart while dancing. According to some of the Pleasanton Pacesetters adjusting to the masks was not a very hard thing to do. Before camp even started the Pacesetters were already use to wearing the masks due to multiple practices prior to camp.
Mrs. DeWaal is very proud of how the Pacesetters did at their private camp. They can’t wait to compete these wonderful dances they worked so hard on to learn. A huge congrats and good luck for the 2020-2021 Pleasanton Pacesetters!