As pain shoots through my legs, and my lungs feel like they’re going to explode I tell myself to continue. If I stop now, I am not only letting down myself, but I am also letting down my fans, coaches and especially my teammates. These are all things that may be familiar to you if you are a dancer. But if you aren’t, these may seem like completely terrible things to experience, but trust me, they aren’t.

I began dancing at the young age of four, but was never officially on a team until I got into the seventh grade. After only a couple of days at practice, I had welcomed twenty-five new girls into my family. And they would be not only my family and teammates, for the next five months, but they would also be my best friends. The bond that we share is like no other bond that I have ever felt before. We were so close that even our conscience sounded like one of our teammates at some points in our lives! Our coaches, the mothers of our family, taught us things that we would not only use on the dance floor, but also in life in general. Like “strive for your best in everything that you do, even if you feel like you can’t continue.”

Dancing was really always my escape for my anger, ever since I was little. When I was stressed over school, boys, or even my parents, I would turn my iPod up REALLY loud and let the music take me away. Sometimes I felt like wanting to stand tall on my tiptoes and do a little ballet, or at times I felt like going contemporary and making moves up as I go.

Even though dance is incredibly hard, and I get made fun of because I’m not as aggressive as basketball players, or wrestlers, or because a lot of people don’t think that dance is a sport, I still continue to hold my head up high and do what I love. For some reason I love the feeling of working my hardest that I possibly can, for three straight minutes. Because after those three minutes, I am able to think back and realize I’ve just accomplished, and be proud of myself.

At one point in my dance career, I was asked “Brekkan, why do you dance?” At first it wasn’t a very easy question to answer, but as I sat down, and thought about, I dance for the chance to be able to spend so many hours with girls that I love. I dance so I can not only be coached in dance, but also in life. I dance so I can release anger. But most of all, I dance because I love to.