The stomps and taps echo through the halls from the edge of the cafeteria as the step team practices. For many who walk past and watch, the step team is just a small club on campus who occasionally performs at pep rallies and basketball games, but for the participants and for captains Roxy Rinaldi and Zoomy Taylor, the Redhawk Steppers are a family.

For some, joining step team was just about getting involved in school and extracurricular activity.

“I first got involved in step team my freshman year,” Taylor said. “I was brand new and had just transferred to Frisco, and I wanted to make some friends.”

For Rinaldi, step team was about carrying on a family legacy.

“My sister [Mary Rinaldi] was in step team all four years when she was in high school and when she left, she left me in charge,” Rinaldi said. “it’s what I looked forward to in high school, it’s how I got a lot of friends and extracurricular activity.”

Regardless of the reasons why they got into it, everyone on step team loves the club. After every dreaded Monday, filled with long hours of work and stressful classes, the step team looks forward to practice.

“What I enjoy most would have to be the friendship, the bonding,” Taylor said. “The dedication and how everyone builds each other up. There’s a lot of confidence going around. I feel really good about the members, they’re all really focused and really confident and they all learn quickly and are pretty dedicated to the team and to me and Roxy.”

Their small numbers, with only about five members, also play into the family feel, and allow them to build close connections that many other clubs lack.

“I love the members on step team,” Rinaldi said. “There’s not a lot of us, but we’re strong anyway.”