Eagles' dance team secures its dynasty status

Just call them the queens of dance.

The Jacobs High School dance team recently added to its string of victories by winning the state title in the AAA hip hop category and tying for the state crown in the AAA open pom competition (with Downers Grove South) at the Team Dance Illinois State Championship at the Peoria Civic Center.

Jacobs has now won seven state titles in the last five seasons.

"It means a lot," said Jacobs senior co-captain Danielle Hermann. "We worked really hard this season. This year was a lot harder. There was tougher competition and there was a lot of pressure. All of the team was so driven to win, especially having the other state titles on our back. We wanted it bad. We had a lot of determination."

Senior co-captain Kasey Cavanaugh also noticed an increase in the talent level of the other teams the Golden Eagles faced this season.

"This year there were some very good teams who you could tell worked just as hard," Cavanaugh said. "They gave us a run for our money."

The Golden Eagles changed things up this year with the hip hop routine.

"This year was a lot different with hip hop," Hermann said. "We had a completely different style and had all new moves. It pulled together really well. We were real happy with it."

Cavanaugh said the team took a keen interest in the assembly of the hip hop program.

"The whole team liked choreographing and music," Cavanaugh said. "There was a lot of effort learning and perfecting it. We practiced it every day. We had a lot of good hip hop dancers who were able to work well together."

For the pom routine, the Golden Eagles went for a big splash with a program featuring an "ice" theme. Jacobs dancers wore white wigs and blue lipstick and danced to such ice-themed songs as Foreigner's "Cold as Ice," Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" and Britney Spears' "Hot as Ice."

"We went all-out with the costuming," Cavanaugh said. "That made it a lot of fun."

"The wigs definitely made us stand out," Hermann says. "The judges liked it. It was different compared to other teams. We wanted to do something that everybody could remember."

Jacobs coach Kristen Semrich, who' been at the helm for all seven titles in the last five years, was blown away by the team's effort in the pom routine.

"It was absolutely amazing," she said. "They were so in sync. It was breathtaking. It was the best they've ever performed. They had the wigs and the blue lips. They really played it up that day."

Semrich said the string of state titles the program has enjoyed boils down to one thing.

"Dedication," Semrich said. "It's the time they put into it each year. We're practicing four to six times a week for two hours a day and outside of practice the seniors are constantly working on choreographing and changes. It's a non-stop thing when we are in season."

Jacobs, which qualified for state in hip-hop at its first competition of the season and for pom in its third competition, has won 5 hip hop state crowns in a row and has won pom crowns in each of the last two seasons.

"A lot of people think this was easy," Hermann says. "We worked hard at this. It's unbelievable. I can't describe the feeling. For us to win seven titles in five years is amazing."

"To go out that way senior year having won titles all four years of high school is awesome," Cavanaugh said. "All of that hard work paid off at state each year. It's such a relieving feeling and a great feeling."