To most athletic and extracurricular programs, the phrase “rebuild year” assumes that championships are out of the question while necessary experience is accumulated for future postseason success.
Not for the Tumwater High School dance team.
Since the dawn of the 21st century, coach Kim Griffin’s program has been a perennial powerhouse on the dance floor, taking home 32 state championships since 2002 entering the 2024-25 competition year. In her 29th year of coaching, her team was tasked with welcoming eight new dancers to a squad of 21.
The Thunderbirds were coming off of their best season in program history, taking home their first ever Dance Team Union national championship in small kick and nabbing two state titles in pom and hip hop.
In 2024-25, the T-Birds, led by seniors Raylee Higgins, Olivia Rao, Olivia Baumgarten and Kennedy Hill, felt a target on their back from their 2A, 1A and 3A opponents as they sat firmly atop the varsity dance totem pole. But they had no interest in getting cozy with the idea of being top dogs. Instead, they adopted an underdog mentality.
“Last year, we won two state championships but got second in jazz. It’s like, ‘yeah, we won two but what about this one?’” Higgins said. “This year, we were the underdogs, but we know that there are people that are like that too because they lost to us last year. The judges don’t want us to win all three. Obviously, they want to give everyone a chance, but you have to not give them a reason to not give it to you.”
The judges found no reason to take any of the first-place trophies away from Tumwater at the Yakima Valley SunDome on March 28, as the T-Birds swept the competition and won championships in hip hop, pom and the elusive jazz championship, all with superior scores.
Each of the seniors had won four rings at state but had never completed the “trifecta” of winning all three competitions in one year. In fact, Tumwater hadn’t accomplished that feat since 2019. That rare air was a driving factor for the seniors in Yakima, along with the moments together fading away as their final season concluded.
“I don’t think any of us are going on to do college dance, so we went out on the floor every single time and talked about what we wanted to see as captains, overall and as a team,” Rao said. “All of us knew this was our last time dancing, so we pushed ourselves our hardest. I knew I had to give it my all because I wanted to win, and it paid off. We got our first trifecta, which was amazing to get in our senior year.”
Each of the seniors agreed that this was the most unified team they had been a part of, even with eight new teammates. But the pipeline runs deep for Tumwater dance; Griffin has coached the middle school team for over two decades and the Tumwater parks and recreation junior and midway teams since 2010.
While Tumwater’s opponents often told themselves, “Don’t look at Tumwater,” and tried to focus on themselves during a competition, the T-Birds took a similar approach all season long.
“We know they’re coming for us, and we’re gonna try our hardest to beat them,” Baumgarten said. “I think that helps us. We’re only thinking about what we’re going to do and our own performances and really being in the moment.”
The key to Tumwater’s success is establishing a foundation in practice. Griffin runs a well-oiled machine, chasing perfection by spending hours and hours looking at film and correcting it repeatedly. After their district competition, the team spent six hours fine-tuning every move. Upon returning from spring break, they sat together in a Bush Middle School classroom and watched their state film, not just in celebration of what they had accomplished but in reflection of what they can do to be even better.
“Griffin holds us to the standard. She’s not going to set us up for failure. It takes patience within ourselves,” Higgins said. “You’re not going to become this crazy dancer overnight. It takes time. It’s good to be tough on yourself because how are you going to get better? But it’s OK to mess up because we’re human.”
It wasn’t dominance from the start for the T-Birds, however. The team had to replace five strong senior leaders from a season prior and bring up junior varsity dancers to fill gaps.
“When they left, there was a hole. We had to pull kids up from JV that maybe weren’t really ready,” Griffin said. “When the officers and seniors were looking around at our group and what we were doing at the time, they were worried and I was worried that we weren’t going to be able to get them there in time. But they worked all that much harder and were motivated to get everybody on the same page and up to the same level.”
Assistant coach Lindsey Stafford, a 2023 THS graduate and four-year dancer, said the senior core fueled the team to glory by motivating the whole team and bringing a collective focus.
“They just really want it and they push the team. That really helps everyone get in the right mindset and focus to win and to be the best,” she said. “Everyone was really determined to win.”
As the four seniors move on from the program, the future remains bright for Tumwater dance. Junior Peyton Peirce and sophomore Madison Sebek have learned from the last two senior classes and the blueprint of what it takes to win at the highest level. The upperclassmen work with some of the younger dancers in the youth programs and have been training the future of the high school squad.
“[Rao] does such a great job on focusing with her younger girls with their performance. A lot of these girls have never performed in front of a giant crowd,” Peirce said. “Then they get to juniors, and I’m talking to them about how to do tricks and turns and skills. By the time they get to high school, they know how to perform and do the skills.”
Out of the 29 varsity teams she’s coached, Griffin said this team ranks in the top five in terms of its unity. Previously, teams have had to overcome festering drama, but she said the seniors were intent on bringing calmness and unity to the team to where the only problems they faced were personal errors on the floor.
“Most of the time, that’s not what you get. You get storming,” Griffin said. “They were determined to not let that happen this year. I can see that going on moving forward because we know what happens when you don’t. Investing in team building and unifying it is so important.”
