Emerson Merritt, staff reporter
Junior Emerson Merritt is an editor-in-chief of the yearbook, and returning staffer for The Shield. Her favorite thing to write are opinion pieces. Merritt is also a member of the Blue Brigade. Outside of school, she enjoys dancing, playing piano, and dying and styling hair. Merritt plans to open her own salon after getting a business degree at Austin Community College and attending beauty school. She looks forward to being the editor-in-chief for the yearbook and reading the finished products of The Shield this year!
![EMERGING ON STAGE The emerging dance company performs at Mac Dance’s “Movement” dance show. The show ran for two nights on Thursday and Friday at the PAC where friends and family gathered to watch all the classes perform. All the dances were choreographed by several guest choreographers, master class teachers, or professional dancers, and there were performances ranging from experienced pre-professional juniors and seniors and non-major members from all grades.
However, this was everyone's first company dance of the year, including emerging class member, sophomore Campbell Epperly who said all the hard work Mac Dancers put in pays off at the showcases.
“This was my fourth show overall at the school, but this was my first actual company dance and it was so fun to me,” Epperly said. “A lot of people don’t enjoy it [Mac Dance] just because they don’t really know the commitment but for me, I really enjoy Mac Dance and I love showdays and my friends and community.”
As part of the emerging dance class, Epperly is one of the few sophomores among many freshmen, so putting together a dance took a lot of work considering it was the first time doing a company show like this for many freshmen.
“For everybody's first year usually the dances are really hard to do and they never get finished,” Epperly said. “We finished blocking and marking and perfectly fine-tuning everything the day before the first show, so that was a lot of stress for everybody but apparently that's how it goes normally.”
The higher-level classes faced even more work by preparing several dances, each of which last around 7 minutes.
“Most classes have 3 dances, and all the major classes have three dances except for my class, and there's one for ballet and then one dance for coach T’s non-major class,” Epperly said.
Moving forward, Mac Dance will have its Spring showcase with all pieces completely choreographed by seniors and juniors.
Caption by Dani Di-Capua. Photo by Emerson Merritt.](https://macshieldonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/img_6054_54285025162_o-1200x901.jpg)
![SUNNY CALIFORNIA: Principal Nicole Griffith poses with her wife Brenda and son Langston at the golden gate bridge in San Francisco.
For Griffith, Thanksgiving break is perfectly timed. “Thanksgiving comes at just the right time every year when we all really need a mental break from school, and this year I was able to completely forget that I was a high school principal and just be on vacation with my family. I didn’t check my email which I needed to do. It was a nice refresher." In their time in California, the group, along with Griffith’s mother, saw sights such as Alcatraz, took a cable car ride, rode a train and visited the science museum. “San Francisco is a fun place to be but it is also a place that is special to our family,” Griffith said. “My wife lived there and really loves it. I always joke that she left her heart there and we have to go pick it up every once and a while.”
Most excited for the trip was Langston. “[My son] loves travel. He gets so excited. He is a definite travel bug, which I don’t know where he gets that. But he loves travel, loves being around his grandparents. It was really great.” The young adventurer got to lean his head out the window on the train, learn cards with his grandmother and explore all of the sea creatures at the aquarium. Griffith was also thankful to miss the rainy weather in Austin. “The weather was beautiful [in San Francisco],” Griffith said. “We missed all the rain in Texas. By the time we got back on Saturday it had passed. But it was sunny in San Francisco and super clear. We never didn’t have these beautiful expanses of light.”
Photo courtesy of Nicole Griffith. Reporting by Morgan Eye.](https://macshieldonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/FullSizeRender-900x675.jpeg)
