ISU Competing At Nationals For First Time

By Ben Corn
Indiana Statesman

The Indiana State University Sparkettes will be competing in their first Nationals competition this week.

Tammy Schaffer, the director for the Sparkettes, said this will be a learning experience for the Sparkettes.

"We only know competition through what we've seen on the computer," Schaffer said. "We're going to see how it works. A competition dance team is very different (from a performance dance team)."

Senior officer, Lacey Lindauer, said she has higher goals than just finding out what the competition is like.

"We want to at least make it to the finals," Lindauer said.

The Sparkettes entered as a video bid, which means they weren't at camp and instead sent in a video and qualified for the competition.

The Sparkettes have been getting ready for the competition since August but, with responsibilities at football and basketball games and other appearances, the Sparkettes have just started to really focus within the last month.

Junior officer Whitney Nord said the team is ready to compete.

"We didn't get excited until the past couple of weeks," Nord said. "We're starting to peak now."

Schaffer said the Sparkettes will perform a dance very similar to the style they perform for the ISU community on a regular basis, but it will be done at a "higher level."

Nord said one thing that makes it exciting for the Sparkettes is the fact that they will be performing for an audience that isn't pro-ISU, necessarily. She said that at an ISU sporting event, for example, the applause isn't necessarily earned by the Sparkettes, because it can be earned by the sports team in the same venue.