When former Parkettes and current co-directors Faith Schway and Marcia Brucciani set out to bring back the Park dance team, they said they were determined to accomplish their goal and feel pleased with the team’s success so far.

“There have been four or five attempts to try and start the group back up, and I said, failure is not in my vocabulary,” Schway said. “We will succeed and we are succeeding tremendously right now.”

According to Schway, through many publicity efforts, the Parkettes reached out to as many people as possible to make their dream a reality.

“Marcia and I have put up posters, we have done career day, we have worked with incoming freshmen, we have done everything that we have learned about that we could do,” Schway said. “We have talked to kids, we have handed out fliers, you name it, we did it.”

Sophomore Parkette Aleah Schuman said she appreciates the diversity within the team.

“There’s so many different nationalities that’s in the group, it’s not just one race. So there’s a lot of different grades and people coming together,” Schuman said.

Brucciani said the co-directors’ outreach attempts accumulated 22 members on their roster, who she believes will benefit greatly from the lessons they will learn as Parkettes.

“We are dedicated because it’s something that we love and being Parkettes gave us so much,” Brucciani said. “It created discipline and responsibility and integrity and friendship and we learned skills that we have brought with us into the next decades of our lives.”

According to Brucciani, the team is working together to fundraise for the program.

“We have a GoFundMe page and we are trying to raise some money and the girls are kicking in what they can,” Brucciani said.

Schuman said she agrees the increase in members is beneficial, however, she said she also notices commitment issues on the team.

“It’s fun to have more people in it cause all you guys are having fun together and there’s more of us, but not everyone is committed to constantly going,” Schuman said.

According to Brucciani, the team faces difficulties trying to set up routines and dance lines with inconsistencies in attendance.

“The difficulty is these girls have other commitments and other obligations,” Brucciani said. “So they don’t always get to all the practices as much as we encourage them to, things do come up, (but) we try to work around it.”

Although their group has grown, Brucciani said they hope to continue including more girls and advance the status of the team.

“Our goal is we’d like to have a dance line of 24 or 32 or 40 girls, and we’d like to have them be very consistent with their attendance and dedication to the group,” Brucciani said. “We are hoping at some point to become a full-fledged team sport, a dance team. We would love to take the girls to the state competitions.”

For more information on how to join the Parkettes, contact Faith Schway or Marcia Brucciani through the student office.