Lily Thelen and her senior teammates on the Ravens Dance Team at Olathe Northwest have racked up countless pieces of hardware in competitions over the last four years.

As a freshman, one of Thelen’s first experiences of competing at the high school level was helping her team make history by becoming the first ever 6A state champions in dance at the 2020 KSHSAA Game Day Showcase.

Olathe Northwest followed up with eight national titles at the National Dance Alliance High School Nationals over the next three years.

But even with all that success, the team was unable to replicate that success at state over the last two years.

Olathe Northwest finished fourth at the Game Day Showcase twice heading into this season.

Thelen said that although the team is still proud of those results, she did not want this year to go the same way.

“As a senior, this was my last chance to get that state title (again), that motivated me a lot,” Thelen said. “I also felt like I had a big leadership role to fulfill. That also motivated me to just do it for my team and do it because this is the last opportunity that I had.”

Thelen, the CapFed® True Blue® Student of the Week, helped the Ravens accomplished just that. Olathe Northwest won the 2023 Game Day Showcase 6A Dance state title on Nov. 17 at the Stormont Vail Events Center in Topeka.
 

Olathe Northwest scored a 93.67 in the finals to knock off the reigning champs in Mill Valley. The Jaguars, who entered state as the three-time champs after also earning 5A wins in 2020 and 2021, finished as the 6A state runner-up with a score of 90.70.

Thelen said the Ravens were able to close the gap with Mill Valley by dedicating themselves to mastering their Game Day routine.

“This year we just tried to build a lot of consistency,” Thelen said. “So throughout all of our practices, we always talked about giving our 100% each day. Some days we might not feel like we have a 100% to give, but just giving all we have each day.”

To make sure the team gave 100%, the Ravens increased the number of days where they were asked to go all out. More accurately, the team was asked to go “full out.”

In preparation for events like the Game Day Showcase, teams often perform a full out practice multiple times. A full out is a practice session where the team executes every aspect of an entire routine all the way through as if it were performing in an actual live competition.

“It’s just a ton of effort and it’s very physically demanding,” she said.

Thelen estimates that the team probably performed a full out around a half dozen times in previous years heading into state. This year, the team had 38 full outs heading into the 2023 Game Day Dance Showcase.
 

“That was just huge for our stamina and our strength,” she said. “When we got to state and performed on the floor, we were a lot less nervous. We were more confident in what we were bringing.

“I think our preparation throughout the couple months that we prepared was really the key factor this year.”

Oddly enough, those full out practices often looked a lot like the team’s first state title victory. 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, KSHSAA’s Gameday Showcase looked a lot different in 2020. In addition to adding dance for the first time, the event was held as a virtual showcase. Teams filmed their performances at home sites rather than at the Stormont Vail Events Center in Topeka. 

The Game Day Showcase has returned to its original format, putting the performers back in front of a live crowd indoor arena setting. 

Although a live crowd might have been the one thing the team could not quite replicate during the full out practices, Thelen said her team was able to recreate a little bit of that live crowd aspect during the week before state. The Ravens had one practice with the parents in attendance.

“We have our parents come in and we teach them all our cheers,” she said. “Then we have them cheering for us, which kind of gets us prepared for what state’s going to be like.”

Those same parents got a front row seat the next week thanks to the newest change to this year’s showcase. The event introduced the “Fan Zone,” which created a section on the floor for parents, family and friends representing each school to cheer on their teams.
 

Thelen described the new fan section at state as a “super helpful” addition to the event.

“It just creates a lot of energy for us,” she said. “Sometimes throughout the routine, it gets really hard and you feel like you can’t keep going anymore. But when your parents are right there and you can see them and look them in the eyes, just have that energy for them, it really helps our energy.

“It helps us keep going and creates a much bigger effect for the dance. So much more positivity throughout the dance, which really helped us.”

Now with the second state title under their belt, the Ravens will turn their attention to this year’s NDA High School Nationals in March. Thelen will try to finish her career with double-digit national titles.

After already winning three national titles in Game Day, the team should be in good shape to bring home some more hardware in the category. According to Thelen, the team’s routine is generally the same as the one performed at state.

“We make a few changes from state to nationals, just to accommodate our team and how it changes over time, but overall it’s the same routine,” she said.

Outside of the school season, Thelen performs as a member of the Artists Revealed Dance Company. Thelen maintains continuity when she competes for that organization. Her teammates for trios competitions are the same as for the high school team, performing alongside junior teammates Miley Fisher and Eva Hurtig.

For individual solos, Thelen has placed in the top 10 at every competition so far this year.
 

Thelen will also try to continue that success at the next level. Thelen will head to Texas Tech University next fall after signing with the Red Raiders’ dance squad in November.

Thelen said Texas Tech first landed on her radar during her sophomore year while attending a combine in Nashville.

“There I got a few teams reaching out to me and inviting me to come to their clinics and their intensives,” she said.

She narrowed down her options to three schools and started to attend camps at those schools. After attending quite a few camps at Texas Tech, Thelen decided that Lubbock was exactly the place where she wanted to attend college.

“I just love the environment there,” she said. “The coach and all the girls on the team, I just really like it.”

It doesn’t hurt that her older sister, Emma Thelen, has already spent the last two years there and is currently a junior competing on the dance team.

“That was a big factor that helped me decide,” she said. “I got my official offer last month to be on their team and that’s when I committed and signed.”
 

The Thelens are now fans of both the Kansas City Chiefs and Texas Tech football teams, a development that’s only tangentially related to Patrick Mahomes playing quarterback for both. Thelen’s mother Keli competed for the University of Nebraska dance team, graduating in 1999, before becoming a Kansas City Chiefs cheerleader.

Her mom put both Thelen and her sister into dance when they were young. Despite her mom’s background and success at a professional level, Thelen said she never really felt external pressure to perform well as a dancer.

Instead, she experienced internal pressure.

“There was a little bit of pressure, not even because of my mom, but expectations of myself,” she said. 

With her mom being a former NFL cheerleader and her older sister already showing talent in that same field, Thelen pressured herself into trying to keep up.

“But I really liked dance and just fell in love with it,” she said. “That took over more than the pressure, so that’s what kept me going.”

Looking back, Thelen is glad that her mom had those experiences to help give her insights and instruction whenever she needed it.

“She helps me in a lot of different ways, like guiding me,” she said. “She does leave it up to my teachers and my coaches a lot of the time. They’re younger and know a little bit more about what’s going on in the current dance world.”

Thelen said she and her sister are both interested in pursuing a professional dance career. For Thelen, she would not mind if that ended up following in her mother’s footsteps as an NFL cheerleader.
 

“I’m not exactly sure where yet, just seeing where my future takes me,” she said. “But I definitely want to dance professionally and I think the NFL would be super fun.”

After all Thelen’s success in dance competitions during high school, she should be in the right place to continue picking up top honors at the collegiate level. 

The Texas Tech Pom Squad is a dance team that performs at home games for football, volleyball, men’s basketball and women’s basketball. The team also competes at the UDA Collegiate National Championship held every January.

The team won a world championship in the National Premier Jazz Team as the Red Raiders represented the U.S. in the 2022 International Cheer Union World Cheerleading Championships in Orlando, Florida.

In terms of academics, Thelen plans to double major in finance and accounting, a direction she has planned to take for a few years now.

“I've always really liked math and dealing with money,” she said. “So I decided a while ago that I wanted to do finance, and then just this year I decided that I wanted a double major and do accounting as well.”

Thelen wants to dance professionally, but she also wants to progress in a career outside of dance at the same time.

“I really like having security and a plan,” she said. “I want to have a job that I can do outside of dance. But if I can’t do both at the same time, I definitely want to just dance as long as I can after college, then maybe go into a finance job (after) and go that route.”

Thelen decided to take five AP classes this year. She wanted to maximize the number credits that she would be able to transfer toward her college degree. Thelen’s favorite AP course is also one that she’d classify as one of the hardest: AP Calculus. 

Thelen said it’s been very taxing taking on a rigorous course schedule alongside her already demanding dance team commitments, but she’s also not somebody who never shies away from hard work.

“That’s just been a big commitment, especially with dance and everything,” she said. “But I’ve always held myself to a very high standard academically. I like a challenge and I like pushing myself.”