VHS welcomes new clubs

The+Sunshine+Sisters+Club+meeting+outside+on+a+Friday.

The Sunshine Sisters Club meeting outside on a Friday.

Caitlin McKeand and Hadley Hudson

Students are getting involved in all kinds of clubs, and there’s always a club for someone.

The new clubs at school are here to help with everything from VHS Bolly Club to the Sunshine Sisters. VHS Bolly is all about getting a platform for students for Bollywood dancing and allow students to get a feel for what it is.

We are very passionate about Bollywood dancing and have been doing it for a long time, and there haven’t been any dance clubs at Vandegrift,” co-president Anjali Rayasawe said. “We wanted to show people what Bollywood was all about, and show its cross-cultural elements.”

Holly Lyons is the sponsor for the newly formed club since she is the dance teacher at the school.

I think it’s good to have diverse types of dance here,” Lyons said. “We don’t do a lot of Bollywood in our dance classes, so I think it’s a really nice way to have some more diversity in our dance department.”

Short term goals for the club include getting more people involved in the club, and getting the word out that there is a club that teaches Bollywood dancing.

“A long term goal would be to improve on our choreography and dancing skills,” co-president Neha Shah said. “Expanding what we can bring to the table, and expanding our own knowledge of Bollywood dancing as well.”

For now, they meet every other Friday. At these meetings they learn a one minute dance that they practice over the course of a few weeks.

“One of the things they are going to do this year is that they are hoping to be able to perform in the spring show, the dance spring show in April,” Lyons said. “I’m sure that they will, they are preparing something for that. I’m not sure about all of the other performance opportunities that they have, but VHS Bolly in general is a time that people can all get together, learn some Bollywood dance, and have fun.”

VHS Bolly isn’t the only club featuring active fun, there’s Quidditch Club too.

“My co-founder, Mika Lopez, found out that her older sister was trying out for the NYU Quidditch Team,” co-president Navya Janga said. “Interested by the idea, the two of us researched about the Quidditch Club and thought it would be cool to have a team at Vandegrift.”

The Quidditch Club is essentially a Harry Potter fan club, however the main focus is practicing and playing Quidditch.

“Our short term goals are to establish a stable Quidditch Club in Vandegrift with some sort of a team,” Janga said. “In the future, we hope to host tournaments with other high schools that have Quidditch teams as well.”

The club hasn’t met yet, but they hope students will be on the lookout for future club posters. The Quidditch Club is all about teamwork, and so are the Sunshine Sisters.

“It’s [The Sunshine Sisters Club] basically a club to promote positivity and girl supporting girls,” club president Makinna Pritchard said. “It was about two weeks into school year, and I wanted to get the girls together and make sure everyone was happy and that they had a safe place to come talk to people.”

The club currently meets on Fridays in Mea Pavey’s room (1414) or in the courtyard.

“Our last meeting was talking about what sisterhood is and our next meeting is talking about what it means to love yourself and the different ways that it affects other people around you,” Pritchard said. “My long-term goals will be for us to keep in touch for a long time and make an impact on the way Vandergrift operates positivity wise, keeping other people up and not putting people down.”

The club that is all about empowering girls and spreading positivity throughout the community according to Pavey.

“It’s an awesome club,” Pavey said. “I love that they’re trying to spread positivity! There’s so much negativity, especially when everyone’s in high school. There’s gossip and drama and all they’re trying to do is make sure that everybody’s happy and that everyone has a friend that they can go to.”