Coronavirus cancels dance team competition season 2020-2021.

Senior Elizabeth Beattie is upset her dance team competition season has been canceled, but she understands why.

“It’s kind of a bummer because it’s senior year and this is the team that got me into competitive dance,” she said. “I do understand though, just because the competitions have barely figured out what their going to do with all-star teams let alone us high-school teams.”

Beattie said her teammates feel as if it was too late anyway based on the time they would need to get ready.

“I feel like it’s too late in the season for varsity to successfully prepare and clean a routine in order to perform it at our best on a competition stage,” she said.

Newly installed pandemic protocols placed the season in jeopardy from the beginning.

“Most of us kind of said that we weren’t expecting to compete this season just because of everything going on,” Beattie said. “If were being 100 percent real, our health and safety and getting our covid numbers down is more important than a dance competition”

As a senior, captain Katie Perez also expressed disappointment the competition season was canceled.

“I’m really sad about it,” Perez said. “I was really excited to compete again especially because it’s my last year, but I think it’s also kind of good because it’s a lot less stressful.”

Perez said she has been concerned that coronavirus rules would not only affect her competition season but also game days. 

“I’m just worried because I hope it doesn’t change games too much because I don’t know if we’ll be able to like stay inside and watch,” Perez said. “They have a rule that like only one team can be in the gym at a time.”

 Like most dancers on the team, Perez knew there was just not enough time to prepare for competition.

“There were so many unknowns over the summer whether we could like do choreography or not that at this point if we were to decide to do a competition it would just be way to much into little time,” she said.

By Rebecca Benezra