My daughter Alexandra is a four-year member of Oviedo High School's dance team, and like every high school senior, she was looking forward to all the lasts that the end of senior year has to offer.
For Alexandra and the dance team, the Spring Show is their goodbye. The team takes the stage in a jam-packed show, doing multiple dances in various groups to show their friends and family all of their hard work.
There will be no banquet for the girls to celebrate their year and spend time together as they give out all the fun superlatives like "Best Dressed" and "Best Hair", or the more serious awards like "Dancer of the Year".
This team was lucky, and was able to attend their national competition in early February where they placed 5th in the nation in Large Varsity Hip Hop! The team made school history by placing the highest ever, and that has helped them cope with not being able to dance together again.
But for the seniors, they never thought that competition was going to be their last dance ever as teammates, or the last time they would be on stage as high school seniors. They were looking forward to more practice and spending time with their teammates as they prepared to give their goodbye at Spring Show.
The five seniors were to take the stage one last time together to showcase their talent, and undoubtedly cry and make all the parents cry, before they took their place in the audience. Their senior sashes will not be laying across those coveted alumni seats at the end of the show. They won't have their slideshows projected on stage that chronicle their years of dancing; including the embarrassing early pictures that every dancer has, photos of them in ballet or tap class when they were in elementary school.
Watching her teammates do all the senior rites of passage for the last three years and being so excited for "her turn" and then not having the opportunity to do them just stinks.
She will always and forever be a part of the Class of 2020. These seniors are incredible and are handling the abrupt end to their senior year with class, grace and, of course, tears.
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