Beamer dance team grabs sixth state title in last eight years

By Casey Olson • March 31, 2011 7:20 pm
The Todd Beamer High School hip hop dance team won its sixth state championship in the last eight years Saturday at the WIAA Dance and Drill Team State Championships inside the Yakima SunDome.
The Todd Beamer High School hip hop dance team won its sixth state championship in the last eight years Saturday at the WIAA Dance and Drill Team State Championships inside the Yakima SunDome.

To say the Todd Beamer High School dance team has dominated the hip-hop category would not be doing the Titans justice.

The Beamer dancers won their sixth Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) Dance and Drill Team State Championship in the last eight years Saturday. The Titans outlasted 15 other teams to win the hip hop category inside the Yakima SunDome. The WIAA State Dance/Drill Championships were held March 25-26.

“The team has a lot of pride in our winning record,” said head coach Valicia Valiani. “At the beginning of each season, I remind the team they are state champs, but this is a new year and a new team. The title will not be handed to us so we have to start proving it now.”

The Beamer hip hop dance team tallied 475 points to blow away second-place Heritage High School, who finished with 447.5 points. Union (433 points) finished third and Thomas Jefferson was sixth overall with 407 points.

Beamer also finished up in fifth place in the Dance category at the state championships. Kentridge won the state title in the event and Jefferson finished in sixth place overall.

The dance team at Beamer is a year-round program. Tryouts were held in May and the team practiced during the summer and also attended local dance camps. During the school year, they practiced three to four days a week, along with many of the students also being involved in local dance studios.

“It took a lot of dedication and patience to start to grasp what it would take to be a technique-based dance team,” Valiani said. We struggled at our first few competitions, but everything started coming together the last two months of our season. Thankfully, the team stuck with it, trusted each other to do their part and got it done again at state.”

The Beamer team consists of Adam Yoon, Mariah Richard, Myles Tucker, Tianna Valiani, Randy Ford, Olivia Rao, Alanna Vann, Roshni Changela, Ula Jun, Jordan Greene, Heidi McKenna, Kevin Mondragon, Megan Aasen, Madison Niksich, Sorelle Hardin and Deshanee House.

The Decatur dance team also walked away from Yakima with some hardware of their own. The Gators finished in second place in the Class 3A military division, second in the 3A kick category and ended up third in the pom division. The finishes came a year after Decatur won the 4A pom category during the 2010 state meet.