First Ladies officers bring home top awards
Group to perform opening number of YesterYear Review

First Ladies Officers with awards earned at Starmakers Camp are, left to right, (front) Rachel Marble, Codi Potter, Sam Draper, (back) Laura Viergever, Dru Dawkins and Rachel Lunsford.

The Whitehouse First Ladies of ficers attended the Starmakers Officer Camp held in Richardson from June 1-4. The officers for 2007-2008 are Capt. Dru Dawkins, First Lt. Rachel Lunsford, and officers Sam Draper, Rachel Marble, Codi Potter and Laura Viergever. They are under the direction of Shelly Johnston.

The Starmakers camp is designed for drill team officers and teaches and evaluates the dancers on many different styles of dance including jazz, lyrical and modern at three levels of difficulty: Division I, II and III. The camp also offered leadership and technique classes. In addition to learning and performing new routines, each officer group performed a "Home Routine" for evaluation by the judges.

The First Ladies officers received the "Superior Home Routine Award." Awards were also given to teams with outstanding characteristics in their home routine. The First Ladies were awarded each of these as follows: Excellence in Technique, Excellence in Precision, Excellence in Showmanship and Excellence in Choreography for the routine to "Time After Time" which was choreographed by Dana Eberlan.

The First Ladies were the only officer group at camp to receive all of the excellence awards.

During camp, the First Ladies officers performed routines at the most difficult level, Division III, for each class attended. This division was mostly attended by larger 5A high schools including several Houston, Austin and Dallas area schools as well as Tyler's Robert E. Lee High School.

The camp started early every morning and the officers practiced until midnight each night. Their dedication and hard work paid off as they received many blue ribbons in addition to the prestigious Home Routine awards. Capt. Dru Dawkins also received an award for Outstanding Kicks.

The officers represented Whitehouse High School well and are excited to share their new skills and routines with the 2007-2008 First Ladies drill team line during technique classes held throughout the summer.

The officers will also be performing the opening number in the Whitehouse Yesteryear Review on Friday, June 22, beginning at 7 p.m. in the Whitehouse High School Auditorium.