This year, junior Hannah Desoto has started a new club with juniors Emily Ferguson and Natalie Rouse called the Dance Marathon Club, which is affiliated with the SDSU Dance Marathon. 

The Dance Marathon is a program in which students host a dance to raise money for children with illnesses. Natalie Rouse, a member of the board, explains the details of the club.

“Dance Marathon Club is the planning committee for a really great event that gives back to our community,” Rouse said. We put on a dance where all of the proceeds go to kids with terminal illnesses at Rady Children’s Hospital.” 

Desoto, the club president, is introducing the program once again to CHS, but with more improvements from last year. 

“The goal of dance marathon club …  is just to get lots of fundraising and get the word out for our cause,” Desoto said. “We’re going to do a trip to Rady Children’s hospital for promo videos and just getting … the idea across because we did it last year and it wasn’t as successful, but it was our first year so our goal is just to get everyone involved and get the community involved in this cause.”

Because of her experience leading the Dance Marathon last year, Desoto feels qualified to take the position of president of the Dance Marathon Club. Desoto explains how she thought of the idea to create a club based on the Dance Marathon, referring back to her inspiration by an alumnus of Carlsbad High School. 

“One of my mentors who went to Carlsbad, she’s a senior at SDSU now, was an ASB president here, and she approached me a while ago wanting to bring up the idea last year, and when she came to our ASB class to talk about it I kind of jumped on the opportunity to spearhead it,” Desoto said.

Last year, Desoto was in charge of the Dance Marathon, but she had yet to think of creating a whole club based on the organization. This year, she wants to incorporate more ideas and recruit more students to become more involved in the program. 

“We’ll have meetings discussing our goals and creating little teams of what we need students to do, whether it’s advertising or outreach or community,” Desoto said. “Anyone’s welcome … but it’s not a club where you come in where you just go through the motions; it’s like a team.”

Desoto also recruited one of her friends, Emily Ferguson, to set up the club with her. Ferguson is in ASB along with Desoto, so she became one of the first people to join the board of the club. Because of her close friendship with Desoto, Ferguson quickly became interested and involved in Dance Marathon. 

“I think being such close friends with Hannah really pushed me to be super involved, so I helped a little bit last year even though I wasn’t directly involved,” Ferguson said. “I think that kind of helped, and I was always just super passionate about it.”

Desoto, Ferguson and Rouse are interested in recruiting more students to become involved in their club. Desoto also pointed out how joining Dance Marathon Club benefits students’ college applications along with leadership experience. 

“If you feel like you could be leading, we need spots for MC’s [for the dance], internal, behind the scenes and the actual event,” Desoto said. “We’d love a dance choreographer because we want to do a big three-minute dance that we have and just to get that would be awesome.” 

If any students are interested in joining, the board of Dance Marathon plans to start meetings within the next few weeks. The members encourage anyone who has a passion for helping the community to join the club. 

“It’s awesome because all the money we raise, 100 percent of the fundraising goes directly back to the kids,” Desoto said. “It’s such a great cause, and I’m really excited to bring a second year of it to Carlsbad.”