Stacey Sheppard

As a dance coach for 16 years, I took pride in building girls' confidence and skill level. My priority was putting out quality, clean routines while also focusing on their mental health and building the team up from the inside out. I worked hard to be a better coach every year and adjusted routine difficulty depending on the average skill level of the current team, featuring stronger dancers in groups. Dance has always been a part of my life and I have grown a huge group of "daughters" from my years coaching. Below I'm listing what tasks I took on as dance coach for West Ouachita High School.

Yearly Tryout

• Assisted in choosing tryout dates.
• Reaching out to and hiring knowledgeable judges for tryouts.
• Attending parent meetings and providing tryout requirements and information to potential dancers and parents.
• Updating tryout flyers and sending them to feeder schools and their social media pages.
• Organizing meetings with the 8th grade girls at the feeder schools to encourage them to tryout for the dance team.
• Choreographing a short routine including different styles of dance and cutting music for said routine to be taught at tryouts.
• Running a 3 day clinic to teach tryout dance and tryout skills: leaps, turns, and kicks.
• Separating girls into 3 to 4 person tryout groups and calling tryouts.

Summer Camp

• Assisting in choosing camp location and dates.
• Organizing clothing consultations/fittings and assisting clothing selection with Varsity.
• Registering with UDA for our camp.
• Completing Master Roster to add new dancers for UDA Registration.
• Booking charter buses(if needed) to transport girls to and from camp.
• Distributing all event paperwork to parents and collecting medical waivers.
• Updating packing lists to match current clothing.
• Choreographing and cutting music for "Home Routine" to compete at camp. Cleaning routine and scheduling practices to prepare the routine.
• Creating a clothing schedule for the week of camp.
• Separating dancers into appropriate level routines and styles for camp.
• Helping dancers with their routines by learning their routines and working with them.
• Creating formations for and cleaning group routines.
• Doing head counts at bedtime for dancer safety.

Football Season

• Creating practice schedule calendars for dancers and parents that cross reference the school board's calendar to account for all testing, holidays and virtual days.
• Choreographing and cutting music for football games and pep rallies.
• Bringing the team to the football field to get spacing for routines.
• Adjusting formations when girls get sick or cut from dances.
• Running practices with full stretching, strengthening, and teaching/cleaning routines.
• Communicating with "Away Game" schools to inquire about our dance team performing and then organizing script and music to be played.
• Teaching sidelines to be performed on the track during football games and on the court at pep rallies.
• Attending all pep rallies and running the music for performances.

Basketball Games

• Choreographing routines and cutting music for all home basketball games.
• Running regular practices to clean routines and continue stretching.

Banquet

• Leading a vote for banquet awards prior to the banquet and reporting the results to sponsors.
• Announcing/presenting trophies and awards.