As the school year comes to a close, students often begin to check out of their work and responsibilities, thinking instead of sleeping in late and taking all-day beach trips. This, however, was not the case for juniors Brooke Wasson and Alyssa Slattery, who competed on the popular reality show America’s Got Talent at the end of last school year.

“The producers of the show found our dance through YouTube, and emailed our teacher asking us to come to the open call audition in Los Angeles,” Wasson said. “Then, we started practicing.”

The two dancers, along with their dance team from Evoke Dance Movement, rehearsed their tap dance for hours on end, hoping to make it past the first round of auditions and onto the live show.

“We made it through the producer round and went to the LA round where they had the celebrity judges, where we got four ‘yes’s,'” Slattery said. “Then we went to New York, which was ‘Judge’s Cut’ week. Only 80 acts out of the entire country got chosen to go to New York.”

Despite participating in a once-in-a-lifetime experience on the other side of the country, the students were still expected to keep up with all of their schoolwork.

“Since we were in New York for six days, we had a behind-the-scenes tutor,” Wasson said. “We had to complete a certain amount of schoolwork per day because we are minors. She was really nice, looking out for our best interest.”

While on the set of America’s Got Talent, Slattery and Wasson were able to get an inside look to the making of a television show.

“It was a really eye-opening experience because we got to find out how reality TV works,” Slattery said. “We got to go behind the scenes and see how they run things and how it all comes together for TV.”

Although the dance team got cut in the “Judge’s Choice” week of auditions, they were satisfied with their accomplishments and gracious for the experiences they gained while in New York.

“We are thankful we made it that far, but if we had gone any further it would have been too much for us,” Wasson said. “We are just kids and it would’ve changed so many aspects of our lives. We got to experience it, but just enough to be wowed by it.”