The Cupertino Golden Spurs have had an impressive track record during the 2023-2024 season, winning over 13 awards collectively. From traveling to various high schools for local competitions to attending prestigious contests such as the USA Northern California Dance Classic, The Spurs have achieved numerous distinctions from varying events:
Homestead High School Forte Dance Competition:
- 2nd place in small hip-hop
- Crowd pleaser award
- 1st place in character
- Top 6 solo finalist award (Hailey Ryu)
Lincoln High School Celebration of The Stars Dance Competition
- 1st place small jazz
- 1st place small lyrical
- 1st place character
- 2nd place small hip-hop
- 6th place solo finalist (Hailey Ryu)
- 1st place drill down (Victoria Hunt)
- 2nd place drill down (Hannah Kim)
- 3rd place drill down (Riko Hatanaka)
USA Northern California Dance Classic
- 4th place in small lyrical
Contest of Champions Nationals
- 2nd place x-small hip-hop
- 2nd place small novelty/character
- 4th place x-small lyrical
- 4th place x-small jazz
- Runner up x-small classification award
To have reached such impressive results, The Golden Spurs had to undergo extensive training during the season. With lengthy practices after school every day (as well as occasional ones on the weekends), The Golden Spurs prepared four intricate routines in lyrical, jazz, hip-hop, and character for their competition season. Junior Emily Wright, an officer of the Golden Spurs, reflects on the season sharing her thoughts about its struggles and successes.
“Overall, our team gets along pretty well, but the time commitment can be rough sometimes […] because we practice so often and sometimes for so long, it could be draining both emotionally and physically, but it’s so worth it in the end because you have fun performing with your teammates and growing closer to each other,” said Wright.
“I think one thing as officers and our coach always tells the team is that our job is to only worry about ourselves and to focus on having the best performance as we can, and if we come off the floor feeling like we did everything we possibly could with no regrets, that in itself is a win. And I think that this mindset in itself has helped us place well. Recently, at nationals we placed second in 2 categories and fourth in 2 categories” added Wright.
Senior Sierra Chen, another dancer on the Golden Spurs, also reflects on the season.
“At the very beginning, I was unsure honestly about how good we would do, because we don’t really know how we compare against the others until we see how we do at the first competition. But then when we actually got there we ended up placing first in a couple of things and a second in a few and I think we did pretty well overall,” said Chen.
Chen also shared their future pursuits in dance beyond high school, stating “Honestly I’m really dead and burnt out from dance and I’m kind of done with it, but in college, I think that depending on if I meet any friends in dance groups, I might try out. But right now nothing is set in stone.”
As the competition season for The Golden Spurs concludes, the team is beginning to prepare for their spring show, school rally performance, and auditions for the next school year.
