BY WENDI REARDON PRICE
Clarkston News Sports Writer
Madeleine Arbogast’s next step after graduating from Clarkston Everest Collegiate High School in June is heading to Honolulu, Hawaii.
Arbogast will be attending Hawai’i Pacific University in the fall after being selected for the Sharks’ dance team.
“I am so grateful to everyone who has gotten me here – my parents, my school, my dance teachers,” Arbogast said. “I’m very excited to continue doing what I love at a college level.”
Arbogast sent a video audition in early May. Because of restrictions due to COVID-19, she wasn’t able to audition for the school in person.
“It was definitely very different not being there in person,” she said, adding in June they contacted her and let her know she made the team.

She explained she was sent the music and copies of the dances they wanted her to perform. Then, she was expected to submit a video to them.
“I had plenty of time to practice the dances,” she said.
Arbogast began dancing when she was just 4-years-old.
“My parents signed me up for it when I was little, of course with the ballet shoes and tap shoes,” she said. “Then, I never really stopped.”
She began competing when she was around 8-years-old and began dancing with Center Stage Dance Company in Oxford back in 2014.
“I have been doing this for a while,” she said. “I’ve never performed sideline or competed with a school dance team before, so this should be fun, different, and exciting.”
Arbogast added dancing has always been something she has loved.
“I just find it so fun,” she said. “There is expression of yourself and all the dancing you can do. I have always loved performing and performing for people.”
Arbogast was drawn to Hawai’i Pacific University for many reasons.
“Besides the climate they offered me a scholarship,” she said. “Then, of course, I made their biomedical engineering program which is super exciting.”
Arbogast shared she would like to be a doctor and she is starting out in the biomedical engineering program to give herself a background.
“I just want to have something of a little more knowledge of the area,” she said, adding she hasn’t decided what she wants to specialize in. “Though surgery sound super appealing to me, but I am keeping my options open.”
Arbogast started her journey as a Mountaineer in kindergarten at Everest Academy.
“It’s indescribable,” she said about her experiences at Everest. “It’s not an ordinary school, it’s like family. Everything like my faith is so rooted in my education.”

  Clarkston Everest Collegiate, Dance, Everest