PT Alumni's Dance Career Comes Full Circle
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
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Posted by: Vickie Echols
Pine Tree Drill Team Instructor's Dance Career Comes Full Circle
By MAGGIE SOUZA, Longview News Journal
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Arms linked and feet ready, about 100 lively girls waited for the music to start — their cue to begin kick-stepping their way across the floor of the Pine Tree Junior High gym.
With the push of a button, Sommer McBee started the song and touched off a flurry of semi-chaotic, somewhat choreographed dancing.
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Maggie Souza/News-Journal Photo |
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Sommer McBee, right, director of Pine Tree's Precision Drill Team, talks to 6-year-old Harleigh Wright at the end of Day Two of mini camp as drill team member Morgan Peck - Harleigh's 'big sister' at the camp - looks on.
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Shouting encouragement and demonstrating some of the moves herself, McBee watched as a new generation of drill team hopefuls tried out their newest dance moves.
This year is McBee's first as director of the Pine Tree Precision Drill Team. As part of her duties, she is directing the drill team's youth-oriented minicamp — the very camp that started her on the dancing path.
"I remember I was so excited (to go to the camp) because I finally got to learn to kick across the floor," the 24-year-old recalled on Tuesday as she wrapped up the second day of camp. The program will wrap up Thursday when the girls perform their new moves for an audience of family and friends.
McBee's love of dance started long before she was old enough to attend the drill team's minicamp, which is open to first- through seventh-grade girls in the East Texas area.
In 1988, at the age of 3, McBee got her first taste of the drill team life as the team's mascot. Clad in a specially tailored uniform, she got to parade around with the Precision, which her sister was then a part of.
It wasn't just admiration for her sister that prompted McBee to take interest in Pine Tree's drill team. "I loved to dance — I've always loved it," said McBee, who joined the team in high school and became captain her senior year.
She went on to dance with the Apache Belles at Tyler Junior College before attending the University of Texas at Tyler and majoring in business marketing. Her plans now include opening her own dance studio.
McBee's extensive dance history and her firsthand knowledge of the minicamp has helped her connect with the kids, said Jane Colquitt, who oversees the camp as vice president of the drill team's booster club.
"She knows the insides and outs of it, having danced it herself," Colquitt said, adding that she can't recall another drill team director who started off as a minicamper. "She's really in tune with the kids (because) she can remember times from her minicamp that made it fun," Colquitt said.
Returning to Precision Drill Team as director wasn't something McBee envisioned as a minicamper or even as a member of the team. "It was not one of my goals until recently," said McBee, who replaced former director Cindy Martin when Martin took another position in January.
"You know how life is," McBee said. "It's just neat how it brought me back here. ... I love the girls on the team and being a part of their life, however I can influence them in a positive way and make drill team as special to them as it was to me."
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