Sandpoint High School hired Laurie Buck to be the new coach for the dance team. Buck replaces Heather Bunty, who stepped down after last season. Buck has been dancing for over 40 years and is the owner of Studio One dance studio in Sandpoint. She is also a familiar face to Sandpoint High School, having previously coached the high school cheer team for ten years.

Buck’s strong point as a teacher is ballet, which, according to dance captain Amber Laiche, makes her a very good coach.

“[Ballet] is really the foundation of dance, so I think she’ll do good in the way of helping us have better technique,” Laiche said.

Additionally to being a very skilled dancer and coach, Buck is also familiar with most of the dancers, having taught them in her studio.

“The majority of us take classes at her studio right now,” Laiche said.

Due to both her skills as a coach and the dancers having already had her as a coach, Buck has the girls’ utmost respect.

“The girls don’t talk, they don’t play around, they work very hard,” Buck said.

Laiche also noticed that the girls were willing to put their full faith in Buck.

“They love dance more because they respect her and see that she will make us better,” Laiche said. “They have a lot of trust in her to do that.”

Since the dancers are already very disciplined, Buck’s next adjustment to the dance program is to make it more challenging and improve the team as a whole.

“Instead of some of the girls being required to do a single turn, they are required to do double or triple turns,” Buck said. “My main thing is just getting them really disciplined so that when we do do our drills and our exercises and our skills that we keep improving.”

As the girls improve and the program gets more challenging, Buck has her eyes on placing in competitions, as does Laiche, who believes that Buck’s ability to see the dancers as a whole will help them.

“She will do good at making us look like an individual team,” Laiche said. “That’s how dance teams place mainly is like we all need to look the same so it’s like a picture of the whole team rather than each individual person dancing.”

Because of the unity that Buck is creating among the dancers, she believes that they have a chance to win some regional dance competitions, but her ultimate goal is “ ..always to improve, just keep improving so that someday we can place at state.”