Though the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to alter the college experience for students at Samford over the past couple of years, Step Sing rehearsals returned this January. Because Step Sing was canceled last year, an entire class of freshman girls was left unable to participate in groups traditionally for them, such as Freshman Girls and Freshman Ladies. As a result, this year’s show will feature a new group: Sophomore Girls.
Sophomores Ellie VanDyke and Ainsley McCannon are the first directors of this new group. As members of the Samford dance team, the duo felt confident about the dancing aspect of participating in Step Sing.
“The first few weeks we focused on just choreo,” VanDyke said. “Me and Ainsley are dancers and cannot sing, so we were already kind of focusing on dance more than anything else, but after the first week, we started working on singing. The girls are picking up really well.”
Because they are a new group, VanDyke and McCannon got the honor of creating a new signature move.
“You use your right arm first and hit from down left to up the right, and then down right, up to the left, and you step with it,” VanDyke explained.
The changes, however, didn’t stop with the new dance move; The addition of another group affected all the other group performances.
“All of the shows are typically seven minutes, but because they added a whole other show, everyone’s show’s down to five minutes,” VanDyke said.
Still, she underscored the importance of the group and her hopes that it would continue after her time as a director.
“I hope there’s Sophomore Girls groups to come because I think that there’s a lot of girls that don’t get the opportunity to participate in their sorority shows until junior or senior year, and I think with Samford’s history of participation and student engagement, I think it would be awesome to have another show for more people to get involved,” VanDyke said.
“Our girls have been putting in everything to give our school the best performance.” McCannon added, “Our hope moving forward is that the group will continue to grow and become a solid name in Samford’s history.”
The Sophomore Girls are excited and well-prepared for their upcoming performance.
“We wanna start Sophomore Girls off on a good foot. If the show does continue on and there’s a new Sophomore Girls next year, we want to really have a good foundation for them to build off of,” VanDyke said. “All these girls are so amazing and everyone’s so passionate about Step Sing.”
