With the 2025-2026 season just starting, Centennial has seen more new staff members, resulting from the many recent retirees. One of them is former athletic director Ms. Prevosto, who had announced her retirement in the middle of the summer. Her decision surprised much of the CHS community, including Ms. Clark–Centennial High School’s former dance teacher.
Ms. Clark, known for leading Centennial’s dance department for the past 23 years, had previously worked alongside Prevosto and the athletic department. In addition to dance, she has coached cheerleading in the past and received her National certification for Athletic Administration almost a decade ago, speaking to her experience and preparation for the role.
“I was ecstatic when I was chosen,” she recounts. “I was excited to be able to take all the things that I do with my dancers through the years and bring that to the rest of the building.”
Although her new role came with much excitement, Clark describes her decision to leave the dance department as bittersweet.
“I didn’t leave dance because I didn’t like it. And it’s something I had done my whole life,” she explains.
Senior dance company member Lacey Dagenais expresses her surprise at Clark’s departure, adding, “She loved what she did as dance teacher.”
Although it was initially hard to picture her as an athletic director, Dagenais now sees how happy and committed she is in her new role, especially when she visits her in her new office from time to time.
Similar to Dagenais, Centennial athletes express the same sense of surprise to Clark’s new position. Cross country runner junior Elisabeth McGarvey explains, “I was confused because I thought that Ms. Clark was a dance teacher and there was kind of no signs of anything changing, so it just caught me off guard.”
Most CHS students weren’t aware of this staff change until the start of the school year, so wonder seems to be a common feeling.
With Clark as the new athletic director, the dance department started the year with Mrs. Jill Cipriano serving as a long-term sub until a permanent dance teacher could be hired. Students rose to the occasion to choreograph the upcoming dances.
Mentioning that dance has a media day coming up, Dagenais details, “My friend, Mallory [Goldman] . . . made the schedule herself for that, so we kind of have to . . .figure everything out ourselves.”
Centennial’s dancers now have a permanent dance teacher. Haley Nachlas joined Centennial September 17. According to Dagenais, Nachlas knows the industry. “She’s 28, and she currently lives in New York…I think she danced professionally in New York for a little bit, which is really exciting.”
The future’s looking exciting for Clark too, who, along with a few other coaches, is starting a Game Day Operations club at Centennial. The club is looking for students who are interested in going into athletic management and related fields. At the college level, being involved in game-day operations would be a paid gig.
Some things that Clark expects from the club is for students to greet the team when they come in and give them the opportunity to help with announcements. She and Ms. Vanover, Centennial’s choir director, are even starting to look to audition students to sing the National Anthem for games.
Clark emphasizes a few coaches from Centennial brought up this idea, mentioning that “they’ve seen it and utilized it at the college level from coaching college sports. And when they came to me with the idea, I was like, absolutely, let’s get this started.”
