ROCHELLE — There were plenty of tears to go around when the Rochelle Chellettes took the floor for their lyrical dance routine in the IHSA Sectional at Huntley High School this past weekend.

It was a culmination of hard work and dedication for the girls, who couldn’t hold back their excitement after learning they would be advancing to the IHSA State Prelims this Friday at the U.S. Cellular Coliseum in Bloomington. The girls placed second out of 17 teams in Class 1A at the Huntley sectional to earn a spot in the state prelims for the fourth time in the last five years.

“It was really exciting for us,” junior Hunter Eckhardt said. “I’m a little nervous about it but I’m really excited.”

The Chellettes returned to practice on Tuesday looking to sharpen up their routine for the state prelims. The team is almost entirely made up of first-time state competitors, with senior captain Jessica Hueramo being the only exception after she moved on to the state meet two years ago.

“The first time I was an alternate so I didn’t actually get to perform, but the fact that I’m a captain this year and I’ll get to perform is really incredible,” Hueramo said. “We’ve been working really hard and I do my best to motivate all the girls before we go on the floor.”

30 teams in each of the three classes (1A, 2A and 3A) from across the state will meet at the U.S. Cellular Coliseum in Bloomington this Friday for preliminary competition, with the top 10 from each class advancing to the state finals on Saturday. Each routine will be judged on 10 different categories making up a total of 100 points.

Some of the categories including synchronization, or how well the dance team moves together, and musicality, a trait that head coach Kass Smith says is one of Rochelle’s strong suits.

“I think the girls do a really good job of connecting to the music,” Smith said. “That’s what the judges have been commenting on the most when we perform. You can just tell the girls love to dance and that’s something you want to see when you watch somebody dance.”

While there’s plenty of passion for dance shared by this year’s squad, there’s plenty of youth to go around as well. Nine sophomores and four freshmen make up just over 75 percent of the team, but considering Rochelle’s recent success at the sectional and state levels, the program has flourished off its youth and has put a formula in place to be successful for many years to come.

“We’ve had a great coach and we’ve all danced together for so long,” sophomore Taylor Kreider said. “It’s so awesome that we’re all so young and we have the capability to dance well. We all want it the same and our personalities mix really well. We’re really excited with our placement at sectionals and the chance we have at state.”

“We’ve all grown up dancing together,” freshman Erin Decker added. “We were all really excited after the sectional and proud that we had worked so hard to get there.”

A birth in Saturday’s finals would be Rochelle’s first since the 2012-13 season, when the Chellettes finished fifth in the 1A section. Although it’s been awhile, Smith said the performances strung together by this year’s squad have given her flashbacks to the group that reached the state finals.

“I compare them a lot to that group,” she said. “They have more natural talent than that other team had, so it’s just focusing on that drive and that commitment. There’s nothing like getting the call for that second day because that’s ultimately where we’re there for and what we’ve been striving for.”

The team will have a send-off at Rochelle Township High School on Thursday before heading down to Bloomington to get ready for the prelims. In the meantime the girls will continue to work hard in preparation for the big event, and their performance at the sectional in Huntley will forever stay with them.

“When we got done you could just feel the emotions going on when we hit that last pose,” Hueramo said. “Our coach was crying because she was really proud of us… Every athlete and every team has its moments where they might not get along with each other but we grew together really fast. We vibe off of each other.”