From practices to showcases, the Mystique team has been preparing for Regionals – a competition they perform at annually.

In preparation, the team learned their dance in the summer and has been practicing three times a week for two hours.

Lizzy Larocco, senior, is one of the members of Mystique who is confident in her team’s abilities.

“Our dances could have been a little better but we have this whole week for improvement,” Larocco said. “A lot of our problems were due to adrenaline because we have never performed in front of people.”

Larocco’s confidence stems mainly from her team’s dances they’ve been preparing.

“I think our choreography is a lot stronger this year, so we have potential to do better,” Larocco said. “I think dancewise, our dances are in the same place with how clean and nice they look.”

Molly Johnson, junior, is prepared to perform at Regionals for the second time in her high school career.

“I’m very excited because we have been preparing for a long time,” Johnson said. “We are ready to do this.”

Mystique hosted a Friends and Family night, on Nov. 25, in preparation for Regionals.

Johnson said the Friends and Family night highlighted the areas that needed improvement; however, she said the team is taking the correct measures to better their performance at Regionals.

“We did have a lot of things to work on but we had our choreographer come in and work with us,” Johnson said. “We were lucky to get the chance for her to come back in because they usually choreograph the dance and we never see them again.”

Kenzie Mckeon, Mystique coach, can’t wait to see her dancers perform at their first competition of the season.

“We’re excited to go into our first competition, and we feel as confident as we can,” Mckeon said. “We’re excited to perform, but from here on out we’re looking forward to the judges’ feedback, so we can look at our dances and improve upon them for the next competition.”

While she is confident in her team’s ability to perform well, she understands the vast amount of competition.

“It’s a very big competition with lots of really talented schools so our number one goal is to just go out there and do our very best and dance the best that we’ve done so far,” Mckeon said.  

Although the size of the competition may be overwhelming to some, the Mystique girls are going into this weekend ready for critique to better themselves and their performance.

“I think that it’s easy to look at other schools and kind of compare ourselves to others, especially if we’re up against really good talent. But our team has really good talent too, so just competing against ourselves and improving each time will be our main focus,” Mckeon said. “This is just the beginning, and we have plenty of room to grow here.”