Sweat slowly trickles down their brow, their hearts pump rapidly, music booms throughout the stadium, captivating the audience with their swift in-unison movement.

The Langham Creek HOLA dance teams participated in the annual HOLA dance competition at the Berry Center at 7 p.m. April 12.

“This competition totally brings us together as a family, whether it is dancers versus non-dancers, we all love the Latin culture, we all love the music,” first year sponsor Nydia Ledesma said. “This is like our big celebration: as long as we give it our all, are enthusiastic, and dance our butts off, I think that is really just the closure to our year.”

Times before the HOLA club has gone to this competition and done well, but this year they performed to represent what they love. The HOLA club was really excited to perform to their heart’s content. Though as performers, they still get jitters no matter how many times they perform.

“This was my first time going to this competition, and I was super nervous,” sophomore Anastasia Marshall- Vanportfleet said. “I just hoped that I didn’t mess up.”

“My first time when I was going to perform I was having a lot of self doubt,” club president Seth Gray said. “I kept looking at the door thinking to myself, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be here’, but now even when I do perform I still get that little nervous feeling.”

Regardless if an HOLA dance member is performing for the first time, or if this is his/her fourth time performing, all members get that little sense of nervousness and slight anxiety. Performances are where the team gets to show the world what they have been practicing on and show the immense amount of passion and hard work put into the dance.

“Yeah, sometimes in the back of my mind, I tend to think awe, I hope we practiced enough for the rest of the group,” Gray said.

Although in previous years people assumed that the HOLA dance club is solely about the Latin style of dancing, this is a misconstrued concept.

“HOLA stands for Hispanic Organization for Leaders of America, so dancing takes the back burner,” Ledesma said. “Everybody has a big misconception of HOLA they think it’s a group of Hispanic dancers or a Latin group of dancers, but really it’s leaders, growing leaders, and so that is really supposed to be the main focus of HOLA.”

“Just making sure kids know that this is about growing as leaders and the Hispanic culture,” Ledesma said. “Although we accept everybody, no matter what nationality/background that you are. If you love to dance, if you love the Latin culture, if you love giving back to the community, then that’s really what we want for HOLA.”