Hello! Were you a member of your high school dance team? Yes? Well, congrats on being extremely cool as a teen, then. Quite the feat. I’m glad one of us had fun back then.
Personally, after I left high school, I made a solemn vow to literally never think about that time again, but I feel like there is no escaping that now because …
Yup. Guys. Sound the alarm. We’ve got a high school dance team scandal in Minnesota, and it is basically everything you could have possibly imagined.
Just look at this dispatch from the Faribault Daily News:
MINNEAPOLIS — During the awards ceremony, the Faribault Emeralds stood on one end of the Target Center court all alone, moments away from celebrating their first state high kick title in eight years.
On the other end, the five other Class AAA teams stood close together, holding hands.
Minutes earlier, the public address announcer had asked those five teams a second time to move back to their original spots on the court. If they didn’t move this time, he said, they wouldn’t receive their awards.
They stayed put.
Okay.
I actually do try to avoid exclamation points (sometimes), because I realize you will almost certainly get my point and do not need me to overdramatize the situation but …
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I mean!
Right?!
(I’m sorry, sports department. Sometimes a line of 14 exclamation points the only appropriate reaction.)
According to reports, Faribault stands accused of copying the routine of the Azurettes, a drill team from Utah. Because of that, other squads protested the Faribault win at the Class AAA State High Kick Championships on Saturday, which led to the moment that was described above.
Obviously, the whole situation seems very awkward, even by teen standards.
The Minnesota State High School League, which previously cleared the routine, said in a Facebook post that it would investigate “what took place during the Class AAA awards ceremony.” And Faribault also complained of bullying, which is always a bummer, regardless of the circumstances.
“We won it fair and square,” Faribault coach Lois Krinke told the Daily News. “We were in first place after the preliminary round almost unanimously, and unanimously in the final round. We’re excited, the girls are really excited. We’re the top team in the state and if they didn’t want their second- and third-place medals, I couldn’t care less. We got the first-place medal.”
Here is an edited clip that shows portions of the two routines side-by-side, for comparative purposes:
(It’s worth noting that Krinke told the Daily News that the music for her school’s version was changed here. I guess watch it without sound or something?)
So was the Emeralds’ routine stolen from another high school from a different state? Don’t ask me. As we’ve established, I was deeply uncool in high school, and therefore have no authority to comment on anything that is dance team-related, ever, in my life. Sorry. The rules of high school stick with us, even after we have left the halls.
“I stand by what we did,” Krinke told the Daily News. “Like I said on the radio, if they’re going to come after me for using a couple moves that have been done many times around the state of Minnesota, then they need to look at all these other dance teams that go to all these private dance studios in the Cities, and they get dances from these studios and take them back to the high school and use them.”
This whole thing is so real. I haven’t seen a dance-off lead to this much controversy since … okay. Since last week. Sigh.
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Sarah Larimer is a general assignment reporter for the Washington Post.
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