Natalie Pacheco, an incoming senior at Coral Gables High, has more than 400 community service hours recorded, most because of her participation on the Gablettes and Co. Dance Team.
“We perform at football games, we do performances for AIDS benefits, for middle schools and we do shows,” she said. “We also had a Gablettes review.”
The dance team competes at regional and national events. In March, they took first place at the National Dance Alliance for the Medium Varsity Team Performance.
“We also won other things too,” she said. “We won first place in junior varsity kick. We are ranked top five in the world in medium varsity team performance.”
Pacheco was not a dancer before joining Gablettes. She saw them perform and fell in love with the idea of being just like the dancers. She tried out and is very happy she was picked for the team.
While being on the dance team takes up much of her time, Pacheco’s also a member of Interact and the Support Our Sports Club.
“It encourages kids to go to football games and soccer games,” she said. “I feel like the students at our school, our football teams and stuff, they need our support and they don’t get it.”
In fact, at some football games the stands are fairly empty, she said.
Pacheco also takes a music class. She is in the Women’s Ensemble, which recently went to a national competition in Virginia and was ranked superior. Although she wasn’t able to go on that trip because of a conflict with a Gablettes performance, she did perform with the group at the state competition, which qualified them for the nationals.
In college, Pacheco plans to major in journalism. “I want to be a writer,” she said.
“I want to be an author for children’s books and I want to be a fashion magazine editor.”
She is considering applying to FSU, Alabama, and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
— Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
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