Junior Captains

This will be my senior year of high school and I'm finally in the position I've worked so hard for over the last three years. Dance team captains have been chosen in a different way every year that I have been on the team. My first year we were told that the five seniors were our captains (even though two of them were really the leaders and the other three were assigned the title but didn't really do much). Last year we voted for three captains, even though four were actually chosen. Again all four girls were seniors and again it was really only two of them that did most of the work at practice.

This year, my year, our team only has two seniors. Our coach assigned the two of us the position without any question or votes. Before our new season started each member had to have a one-on-one meeting with coach to discuss problems, suggestions, goals, etc. At my meeting we talked about the possibility of junior captains, and coach seemed to agree that this would be a good idea. I decided that this would be the best possible situation for our team because we have eight juniors and five or six of them could become a great leader, but mostly because I know that I will be out of town for two weeks in the summer meaning that the other captain could not miss any of those practice and would be in charge of everything which is a lot of pressure for her to have on her. When I mentioned this idea to the other captain she thought it was a good idea so we wouldn't have to do absolutely everything.

We've had three short practices just to keep us in shape before our season really starts up and it's not going as well as we hoped it would. The two juniors that we thought would step into the position have, and they're taking it out of control. They are trying so hard to take the position they are questioning our authority to make themselves appear as the person for the job. At these short practices we haven't been doing a lot, mostly we're working on some technical areas in our pom dance. It's been incredibly easy and I've made it clear that it won't stay that way. It's hard to clean any of the dance because so many people are gone because these practices aren't a huge deal, and even when we do clean something the two juniors who we no longer want to be captain take it upon themselves to cause problems. Two other juniors have stepped up and they seem to work very well with us senior captains. I've talked to coach about the two problem juniors and she's now going keep an eye on them and hopefully she'll agreee that they just aren't going to work. I guess we'll see what happens when we vote for junior captains in a couple of weeks.