The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

thursday aug 29 2002 17 economist sun stouffville tribune sports staff photosjoerd witteveen some of the markham ab dancers that will participate in the nimens katie mclntyre holly nimens and krissy tar and front toronto argonauts junior dance club are back row from left riley from left laura diadamo riley carter and kelly nimens dancers leap at chance to join team more than 100 youngsters apply to join junior dance squad by mike hayakawa staff writer the toronto argonauts have been trying to pro mote football by encour aging youngsters including those in york region to tackle the game and attend canadian football league contests in a roundabout way the same can be said about the toronto argonauts bud dance team contributing to skydome gameday festivities with a pregame show and sideline pageantry during the heat of bat tle the team has recently kicked off a campaign to attract a younger generation of football followers its targeting the female seg ment through the creation of a 50member junior argonauts dance club ashley barnes and leslie stewart eightyear performers with the team and creators of the junior squad say response has been overwhelming we had more than 100 appli cations and were still getting them said ms barnes who along with ms stewart is han dling the choreography the concept has been approved by team president mike pinball demons and general manger paul masotti she noted adding it has been pitched on the skydome jumbotron during games and in a notice at her markham dance studio ms barnes figured the chal lenge would be to find candidates with some athleticism and co- ordination however ms barnes said she and ms stewart were pleasantly surprised with the number of qualified youngsters making the selection process much easier she added comprised of girls between the ages of eight and 13 the jun ior dance team has representa tion from across the greater toronto area and from as far away as hamilton and orillia included in that group is a large contingent from york region katie mclntyre keirsten pugh shannon thompson sarah mcalpine krissy tar kristy vanleeuwen riley carter riley nimens kelly nimens holly nimens victoria mckenzie laura diadamo brooke macdonald kate macdonald kirsten ebenbauer rebecca ruth stephanie thompson and michelle grose ms barnes said she and ms stewart assembled the team because of enthusiasm from kids attending games many wanted to meet cheerleaders and it was a natural step to create a squad just see dancers page 18 roy green been there done that seniors lining up for dance classes turns out its more than just my physical muscles that desperately need a tuneup my memory muscle has also undergone a meltdown i thought my memory muscle was working fairly well after all im still finding my way back and forth to work day after day havent locked the keys in the car for at least a week and can usual ly respond within seconds when asked a question like whats your name but that was before i went for an introductory lesson in line dancing i mean how tough can it be to remember a few simple steps a step to the right bring the left foot behind the right and touch your toe to the floor then do the same thing to the left then one step back and lift your knee then one step forward and lift the knee again thats the first thing you learn in line dancing and its called a vine sidebehind sidetouch side- behind sidetouch step backhitch step forwardhitch then turn calls instructor dianne bishop whose mus cle memory includes hundreds proba bly thousands of different linedance steps actually the first vine is the easy one its what happens after that turn to the left whenyoure facing a different wall see step page 18 yprkregioncom your trusted source for york region news for over 100 years is now online iit 4 i wwwyorkregjoncom movie listings 0 local news find that special something in the classifieds d read your favorite columnist then email it to a friend be nferadive with your communis newspaper site