COEUR d’ALENE — With pointed toes, tartan skirts, knee-high socks and bundles of energy, two local lassies leapt to the win during a Highland dancing competition on May 11.

“I was smiling so much on stage,” North Idaho Home Educators Association freshman Victoria Hawkins said on Tuesday.

Victoria, a dance student of Lake City Highland Dance, and her instructor, Lake City Highland studio owner Kasey Settle, participated in the Federation of United States Teachers and Adjudicators (FUSTA) of Highland Dancing Northwest Regional Championships in Salt Lake City, where they competed against other elite Highland dancers for the privilege of participating at the national tournament in Las Vegas in July.

Teacher and student fared quite well, earning first in their respective age categories.

"My whole goal is to get top three so I can represent the Northwest at national championships, so to get top one was just amazing,” Settle said.

“She was crying,” Victoria added with a smile.

The participants were required to perform four traditional Scottish dances, including a vigorous number called the "fling" dance, and a sword dance that goes back generations.

"That dance is actually hundreds of years old," Settle explained. "Originally, it was a Scottish battle dance they would do before battles, as a good luck thing, where they would dance over it and if they touched the sword, it would be a bad luck omen."

Highland dancing is a unique, traditional dance that often gets confused for Irish dance, she said, but is different in its own way. The dances are performed to bagpipes usually without drums and fiddles.

"Ballet, Highland and Irish are all kind of cousins of each other," she said. "They have a lot of similarities, but they are definitely unique dances in themselves."

"Irish dancers are super stiff in their upper bodies,” Victoria said. “We use our arms for everything."

The Lake City Highland Dance studio, a nonprofit, will hold a performance at 6:30 p.m. Friday at LAM Christian Academy, 4800 N. Ramsey Road in Coeur d'Alene. Admission will be $5 per person.

Info: www.lakecity-highlanddance.com