Wantagh Dance Team Holds Fundraising Car Wash

Varsity Dance Team lined up with buckets, towels and signs in front of  this past Saturday, ready to wash cars for a team fundraiser.

In the parking lot at 1378 Wantagh Avenue, the team of 22 girls hosed, scrubbed and dried vehicles in alternating two-hour shifts, as they worked to raise money for the purchase of new dance team uniforms. Their efforts were supervised by the dance team's coach Joan Mirabella, a Wantagh graduate who has performed with New York City Opera and as a principal dancer at Radio City Music Hall, before her position at the High School, where she has worked for the past two years.

Mirabella said that the car wash this summer was a first for her team.  She expressed gratitude for the pizzeria, which had offered the team use of its premises. The coach also attributed the fundraising success to the hard work of parents like Margaret Motis, who helped organize, plan, and publicize the car wash on Facebook to compliment the event posters that were created. 

Other parents also emailed the coach, volunteering their supplies and time.  “When necessary everybody on my team—families included—have volunteered and stepped up to the plate,” said Mirabella. “All team parents are trying to help out in whatever way they can.”

In the past, parents have assisted the girls in selling cookie dough, baking for bake sales, and raffling gift baskets. Parents have additionally volunteered their homes for the barbecues and sleepovers that will follow the team’s “summer camp” days, where the girls will be learning new dance routines under the guidance of Katie Harwood, who is a professional choreographer from Texas. 

Besides fundraising and improving their moves, Mirabella says her team is actively committed to community service. The girls appear at the high school’s pep rally, football and basketball games to do pom work.  They also sponsor a “clinic” for instructing elementary and middle School girls, where “dance team girls choreograph routines to teach the possible upcoming dancers. 

"My girls are not just dancers,” said Mirabella. “They do a majority of their own choreography, and they do volunteer work… They are color guards with the marching band where they perform every year at the Newsday Marching Band Festival at Hofstra… These girls are not only talented but they also know the meaning of hard work [and] bonding as a team.”

Indeed, the team will continue to work closely together as they hone their skills for the upcoming school year and when they reconvene in August, for their second car wash.