On Sunday Nov. 6, Naperville North High School Dance Team hosted their annual junior-senior brunch at Bobak’s Signature Events to raise money for the team’s upcoming competition season. The proceeds from the event will go towards purchasing costumes, hiring choreographers and providing transportation to competitions. While this event has been a longstanding tradition for the dance team, this is the first time the event has been put on after a three-year hiatus due to Covid-19. 

Former students may remember this brunch as the mother-son brunch. However, as Assistant Varsity Coach Elida Vandenbergh explains, changing the brunch’s target audience opened up the event to more people in the community. 

“We have changed the name to be the junior-senior brunch so that we could include a larger population of Naperville North,” Vandenbergh said.

Alongside student involvement, Head Coach of the NNHS varsity dance team Rebecca Paul adds that this year has been different as the only dancers who have hosted the brunch before are current seniors. 

“This is our first year coming back out of COVID, and we’re rebranding… So, this is our very first year. We’re hoping that it will continue to grow in size, and that this event will be more known to the community,” Paul said.

The event included a brunch buffet, a photographer and attendees were able to bid on raffle baskets and participate in a silent auction. Prizes included restaurant gift cards, jewelry, food and more. Each dancer on the team was tasked with finding businesses in the Naperville, Lisle and Aurora areas to donate items for the raffle baskets and silent auction. 

Co-Chair of the raffle basket committee Jody Morris says that while organizing the baskets was hard work, everything came together in the end with teamwork at the forefront. 

“It was really the girls going out and getting the donations and doing the marketing for the event. The girls really worked hard as a team,” Morris said.

While the event saw decreased attendance compared to years past, senior varsity dancer Avery Pierce notes that the team worked hard to collect donations and that the dance team will continue to host this annual event.

“It’s really special that this [brunch] is run by the dance team and that we can represent ourselves to the school community this way,” Pierce said.