Above photo: The South Florida All Stars dance team, led by club president Kate Walker (top row, first from left) won their first competition since Walker took over in May 2017. Courtesy of Kate Walker
By Jeffrey Waitkevich
USF St. Petersburg’s dance team won its first collegiate competition of the year on Saturday.
The South Florida All Stars dance team took home first place in the 4-year college dance division of the COA Cheer and Dance ULTIMATE Nationals competition, which features cheerleaders and dancers of all ages from around the southwest region of the U.S.
“We really stood out since there were only a very few dance teams there,” Kate Walker, the club’s president, said. “Cheer parents, little kids and even security guards would come up and ask when we were performing because they wanted to make sure they wouldn’t miss it.”
Walker, 19, is a sophomore mass communications major from Fernandina Beach. She led the four-dancer competition team, who danced to “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence and the Machine.
It was the first group dance Walker had ever choreographed. Through dance, the team expressed the stress of everyday life with sharp movements before shifting into a positive mood with “flowy” movements, depicting a dream where the stress is thrown out.
However, the dance team does more than just compete. They perform at a multitude of events throughout the year, including homecoming, the Ebony Ball and their annual “Dancing with the All Stars” event.
In this coming week alone, they have two performances.
The first will be at the Stars in Motion spring showcase on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the USC ballrooms; the second, at the USFSP’s Got Talent show on Wednesday, also at 7 p.m. in the ballrooms.
This uptick has been part of Walker’s initiative to grow the team in every facet since she took over the team that Justice Thornton, her peer coach, started.
She wanted to rebrand the team and be taken more seriously: they got a new logo.
She wanted to see the team compete more: they competed.
She wanted to see the team improve: they won a competition.
Walker said the team is collectively one of the most supportive groups on campus, saying that all 11 members “want to see each other get better” and push each other to do so.
They regularly do team bonding activities as well.
Since becoming club president in May 2017, Walker has placed an emphasis on stretching and conditioning.
The team performs a range of dances from tap to hip-hop to ballet, but the team generally focuses on lyrical and contemporary dancing.
They hold open practices in Studio A in the fitness center on Mondays and Wednesdays from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m. They also hold additional practices for the competition team, which holds auditions every October.
Walker began dancing at a young age when her mother put her in a class to become more social and stop being “such a little nerd,” as Walker described it.
She quickly sprouted a passion for musical theater, but took a hiatus in middle school to give basketball a try.
But dance found its way back into her heart in high school, where she began taking dance more seriously. She even considered majoring in dance at USF Tampa, but opted to attend USF St. Petersburg because she felt it was a better fit.
She worried that her decision would be the end of her dance career, but then she met Thornton and made another comeback.
Now, she wants to provide that same opportunity to everyone else with a passion for dance.
“I want to see more people trying it. My biggest thing is sharing our energy and our love for dance with other people,” she said. “Even if it is just one time, I want them to see the energy of the team.”
The team features a wide variety of experience levels and welcomes beginners with open arms.
