OUR footballers may be struggling to make it but nine West Fife youngsters have already qualified for the World Cup.

But instead of heading to Qatar, they'll be jetting off to Spain to represent Scotland in a different global contest.

The girls, who are aged between seven and 11 and attend New Movement Dance Company in Inverkeithing, will be in San Sebastian in June for the Dance World Cup.

And just to make it a summer to really remember, when they come back, a team from the school will sashay south to perform at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone!

Stacey Anderson, who runs New Movement with fellow dance teacher Susan Thomson, said: "Four of the senior girls went to the World Cup last year; they came home with two golds and a silver, so this year our senior girls are going to do the opening ceremony for the F1 race.

"We decided the juniors should audition for the World Cup and all nine of them qualified, which is just amazing as a lot of these kids have only been dancing for two or three years.

"There are 63 countries taking part, it's like the Olympics for dance. It's massive."

More than 120,000 youngsters, aged from four to 25, have been trying to qualify for the Dance World Cup, which is held in a different country every year.

There are solo, partner and team competitions in a variety of dance categories, including ballet, modern, contemporary, lyrical, jazz, tap, song and dance, street/hip hop and national.

The nine local dancers going to the World Cup are: Ruby Anderson (aged 11), from Dunfermline; Mirryn Healy, 10, from Kincardine; Payton, 11, Lacey, 11, and Dakota Russell (eight), from Cardenden; Ava (eight) and Farah Couper (seven), from Hill of Beath; and Cowdenbeath duo Daisy McLaren (nine) and Amelia McDougall (eight).

Stacey, 34, who lives in Dunfermline, said: "It's a huge deal.

"For 18 months or so, all our training was done on Zoom, schoolwork during the day and from 4pm they'd be dancing until 7pm, and that went on for ages!

"Mentally, that was the only thing that kept my daughter, Ruby, going, seeing her pals at night on those calls.

"We train at Ballast Bank, a council facility, so we were months after everyone else in being allowed back in. Not long after, we had to do the auditions.

"Because of COVID, they couldn't do live auditions so it was all on video, we hired a local hall and had an hour to get nine of them done!

"So with all that going on, we weren't sure how they would do but all nine of them qualified.

"To have stuck that amount of time in front of a computer screen, not being with anyone else and to keep going, they've done really well."

Stacey will be jetting off to Spain in the summer with Susan accompanying the senior girls to the 2022 Formula 1 British Grand Prix.

She said: "That's going to be huge too. My husband, Sandy, doesn't go to the dance events but he wants to go to the F1!

"There's about 20 of the senior girls going and 'Are we going to see Lewis Hamilton?' is all they care about!"

Stacey continued: "We've only been open in Inverkeithing for three years and we've got kids from all over.

"We started with seven seniors and Ruby and now we've got classes at Hill of Beath and Glenrothes too and we've got 120 pupils.

"It's gone crazy since COVID restrictions lifted, everyone is looking for stuff to do!"