Katherine Yacopucci ’20

Katherine Yacopucci ‘20, co-president of West High School Dance Marathon, joined WHSDM her sophomore year because classmate Lila Terry ‘20 was involved. She quickly fell in love with the organization.

“It seemed really fun and it was a really good cause. It made me happy thinking of all the difference we were making for the kids … It’s really nice to see your hard work pay off, especially when you get to see the kids at the Gold-out games and at the big events. It’s really fulfilling,” Yacopucci said.

Yacopucci is the co-president of Dance Marathon with Terry, and they are both a part of the leadership team for Dance Marathon. Yacopucci personally runs the WHSDM Instagram account (whsdmftk) which includes making graphics to promote Dance Marathon. This is her first year on the leadership team and as the co-president, so she is taking on a lot more responsibility. Since they started working on Dance Marathon in the fall, Yacopucci spends around an hour each day planning and getting ready for the events.

“Before I had people telling me what I needed to do and now I’m the one telling people they need to do stuff. And it’s a lot of responsibility because you have to know when things need to get done, where things need to go, make sure things are getting done, and the money is being raised.” Yacopucci said.

For the first time, Yacopucci is also volunteering for UIDM this year. Both Dance Marathons donate all of their money to the Children’s Hospital. Many WHSDM members participate in both Dance Marathons. Terry, Kaitlin Lamkins ’21 and Maddi Logsdon ’21 all participated in UIDM last year.

“They’ve all done it before and this is my first year doing that so it’s been really helpful to have them there,” Yacopucci said. “Lots of high schoolers do it, which makes it super fun because then you get to be in a group with people that you’ve been with the whole year.”

With her experience in WHSDM, Yacopucci hopes to earn a leadership position at UIDM next year as a freshman at UI. She plans on majoring in Pre Child Life, so she will be volunteering at the hospital.

“It’ll be really nice to see the kids that we’re impacting up close because it’s usually just people that speak at our events. But seeing them in their environment, being with them and supporting them, I think it’ll be really nice,” Yacopucci said. “I feel like that’s such a nice start to college, doing something super charitable because I love it so much.”