GRESHAM, Ore. (KOIN) — Maddy Haynes and the Gresham Rhythmettes are at every Gophers football and basketball game and often at soccer matches. She’s a senior leader on the dance team and while her love for the sport was late blooming, her passion has blossomed.
Maddy Haynes found dance in 7th Grade.
“You get to tell, like, that story with your body and you get to really tell the story of the music,” she told KOIN 6 News. “I had always wanted to be a dancer and so just finally getting to do it kinda just clicked and I was excited.”
She immediately fell in love with the storytelling aspect of the sport.
“It was the connecting, like, with the music and, like, being able to tell the story through my movements and I thought it was so pretty,” she said.
For her, there is no better feeling than telling the story of the music to the point where the audience is moved to emotion. “It is so good. It’s, like, the best feeling ever.”
The dream is to have that feeling in a professional setting.
“A lot of the time people will go straight from high school to a pro team and try out and keep trying out until they make it, but for me I feel like it’s going to be a little different since I haven’t been dancing since I was, like, really really young,” Haynes said. “So I definitely want to take, like, my college years to, like, expand my skills and everything. So I’d be taking a lot more studio classes and preparing myself to, like, audition for a team or even audition for things of NFL stuff, maybe Broadway shows I could dance on.”
Stadium lights or Broadway nights — Maddy Haynes isn’t sure where her passion will take her. But she knows she’s in it until the music stops.
“The good thing you get about dance that you don’t get from other sports is that when you’re at home by yourself you can just turn on the music and just dance,” she said. “You just fall right back in love with it again.”
