When the senior group from Paula’s Dance Academy made the trek to Myrtle Beach last week, they knew they would be facing the biggest and best teams from all across the nation. After coming off the stage, the local dancers found out they’re more than capable of holding their own against anybody in America.

Paula’s Dance Academy’s senior team won the National Championship in Hip Hop at the Believe National Talent Competition and finished top 10 and received a Platinum Plus rating in five different categories. A trio of local dancers – Katherine Hyder, Claire Bodary and Dani Terry – also claimed the National Championship in trio for their “Tell Me” performance routine.

“I have an awesome team that worked really hard and dedicated its whole year to do this. We said last year we were going to get to nationals and they worked super hard to get there,” said longtime coach Paula Barnes, a 37-year studio owner locally who was sporting a new red hairdo after making a promise to her team about winning at nationals. “Most of this group has been together since they were 3 and I’m so proud of them. I’m also so thankful for our co-coaches and choreographers – we couldn’t have done this without them.”

Doubt may have crept in when the local team started seeing huge groups arrive from all across the nation, including some talented teams that have been featured on national TV, but when the dust settled and the awards were announced, Paula’s Dance Academy had left a major mark.

“Small town studios can compete with big town studios. It makes no difference. We went up against studios with hundreds of dancers and had never heard of us, but they’ll remember us now,” said Hyder when asked about her takeaway from the trip.The Senior team, which features Hyder, Bodary, Terry, Phoebe Kneip, Channing Cummins, Leela Beaty, Jaidyn Scott, Emma Cathcart and Brooklyn Turner, placed fourth in Contemporary, sixth in Music Theatre, eight in Jazz and ninth in Lyrical throughout four days of competition. Many on the team felt their Contemporary routine, titled “Wondering,” may be the strongest due to its many wins throughout a year of competition, but the judges in South Carolina couldn’t get enough of a hip hop routine, “the Timbaland Mix.”

We were ecstatic. Our hip hop was like no other this year; nobody else’s routine looked like ours. It felt so good,” said Hyder, a senior captain on the squad.

Bodary, another senior captain, agreed that the judges loved it, though she wasn’t going to predict a national championship after showing out in South Carolina. “I felt after we came off the stage that it would place well, but I didn’t know it was going to win. I didn’t expect that,” said Bodary, a dual-enrollment MTSU student who has been making regular trips to McMinnville for two years. “The judges were bopping with us; You know you’re in trouble if they’re not really dancing with you, but they definitely were with us.”

Hyder and Bodary were able to come home with extra hardware for their trophy cases after teaming with Terry to win the trio title. Unlike the celebration from the team title, which Hyder and Bodary both said left the team “ecstatic,” there was a different feeling when they announced the trio results.

“It was almost relief. We had been a trio for two years and we worked our butts off to get that trio as technically challenging as it can be,” said Hyder about the win. “We had to get our faces right and our body language together. You’re trying to make three people look identical. There’s a lot of dead room on the stage with just three people, so it’s very hard to get three people to look the same through a three-minute routine. We’re different, but we had to convey the same message.”

Bodary added, “I’ve never had a dance with that vibe. It was challenging to figure out the vibe of the routine and put in on stage while portraying the message. Spacing is the biggest things with trios.”

Hyder and Terry, partners on the dance floor since age 3, knew immediately when Bodary arrived two years ago that something was clicking. “We always had a missing piece and it was Claire,” said Hyder.

Celebrating a title was all the senior group did in South Carolina, but the moment they were back in town, it was a back to work. Dance never stops for these athletes and winning more championships is now the goal in 2024.