Kappa Delta Shakedown garners support for Children’s Home Society

Tapping, tumbling, stomping and stepping marked Kappa Delta sorority’s annual Shakedown dance competition Monday night in The Venue.

The Venue was packed with sororities and fraternities screaming and cheering each other on throughout the night.

The dance competition is Kappa Delta Epsilon Omicron Chapter’s largest philanthropy event of the year. This year it had 22 sororities and fraternities participate in the competition, along with the DWEEBS and Rukus dance teams.

Each year, the sorority raises money and donates school supplies to the Children’s Home Society of Florida. It also works to raise money for its national philanthropy, which is Prevent Child Abuse America.

According to its website, Children’s Home Society of Florida strives to be a helping hand to abandoned, abused and neglected children and to be a place to nurture and grow family development.

Sydney Hirst, vice president of public relations for Kappa Delta at UCF, said she feels like this event is a great way to raise awareness for CHS.

“The main focus every year is to do better than we did the last year,” said Hirst, a junior advertising & public relations major.

Elyane Miller, president of Kappa Delta, said this event is about having fun but that the sorority also wants to raise more support for CHS, raise more awareness and bring in more participation.

Miller, a senior political science major, was excited about this event because it benefitted the children living in Central Florida.

“We’re really getting to help out our community, and not just the national philanthropy, but actually making a difference within our community,” Miller said.

This was Meghan Ewing’s first year at the event. Ewing, development specialist for CHS, thought it was fun to be a part of it.

“I think that, although dealing with children and some of the issues that we deal with in general can be really sad and that sort of thing, it’s important to have these fun events where people can just enjoy themselves and support the mission at the same time,” Ewing said.

The event was a three-part fundraiser, which included a barbecue held on Sunday night. Miller said this is where they collected most of their money. Each Greek chapter also donated school supplies as well as competed in the Shakedown Competition.

Miller said the event brought a good turnout of people.

The Venue seats around 1,500 people and the barbecue event sold 700 tickets. After everyone who had tickets found their seats, the event staff was told to fill to capacity, Miller said.

For Sarah Warner, senior advertising & public relations major, dancing in the competition was exciting because of the high-energy atmosphere.

“It’s great to be a part of something that’s so big at UCF, especially within our Greek organization,” Warner said.

Warner has danced in the competition for four years so she was able to help pick the theme for this year which was YMCMB, or Young Money Cash Money Billionaires. The dances focused on popular hip-hop artists including Lil Wayne and Tyga.

Dancers each found some way to incorporate Kappa Delta’s name into their dances, either by signaling with their hands KD’s letters or bringing a KD member on stage.

Each group also used creative objects to continue engaging its audience. Some props included baby powder to create a smoky atmosphere, glow sticks, strobes, ladders and chairs.

Many of the dancers incorporated back and front flips that brought great cheers and applause from the audience.

At the end of Monday night, a fraternity or sorority was selected by three judges to be the overall winner of the competition.

“The overall winner is the [group] who had the best dance scored by the judges, donated the most school supplies and had the best attendance at the barbecue,” Miller said.

This year’s overall winner was Kappa Sigma fraternity, and the first place winners were Tri-Delta sorority and Sigma Chi fraternity.

This was the second Shakedown event for Stefano Natali, a junior health sciences major, and Jarred Lokietz, a junior hospitality management major.

Natali said that the night, overall, was riveting and that the song selection was good.

“Very solid dancers,” Lokietz said.

The event as a whole brings in a lot of different help for CHS. Hirst is most grateful for the amount of supplies that are brought in for the children.

“Maybe they don’t know that’s us specifically giving it to them, but having a couple hundred more school supplies in each and every classroom, that’s incredible to think about,” Hirst said.