After being established for almost a year, Team Danzon will compete for the first time at the Indiana Challenge Friday.

Team Danzon has performed several times in or around West Chicago but has never competed outside of the area. They will travel to Michigan City, Indiana for the Indiana Challenge.

“They’re a mix of nervous and excited. They’ve never seen what a real competition looks like,” c0-adviser Janet Hurtado said. “We decided to compete because we want to see this club grow and we want to see them motivated. We don’t want to just keep telling them, ‘let’s dance, let’s dance,” and not really have an angle. We want them to see that they can achieve something.”

Many of the participants are nervous about the competition being far away.

“We’re going to take them there, so they won’t have to get there on their own, but if their parents want to go see them, that makes it a bit more difficult for them where as before, we performed in the area, so the parents had a chance to go see them,” Hurtado said. “But this might be what they need, that extra push, for them to a feel a little bit more confident with dancing.”

In order to prepare for the upcoming competition, Team Danzon has been practicing on Tuesdays and Wednesdays after school.

The team will be dancing to three different dance styles at the competition, bachata, salsa, and merengue.

“They’re paired up, a guy and a girl, and they’ll be out on the floor with several other couples as well. The song will play for a while and the judges will watch all the different couples and write down scores,” adviser Jeff Anderson said. “They will compete at their level, there’s a lot of different dancing levels, and their age categories.”

The participants and advisers are confident they will do well for their first competition.

“I think they’ll do well, will they probably forget some steps or blank out? Probably, but I think they will be able to recover and enjoy and learn a lot from the experience,” Anderson said. “I could see some of them placing. We got some pretty good dancers in there so I think we have a good shot at it.”

The advisers hope the competition will help the team’s skills and character grow.

“I think this is a very good opportunity for them to not only learn what it means to be responsible, dedicated, and committed to something, but it’s also going to help them learn how to push themselves and become better,” Hurtado said.