Wichita-area dance teacher killed in car crash remembered as loving dance, students

Newton Performing Arts Center’s new Facebook cover photo is of Katelyn Nicole Heier in the center’s dance studio with her arms around eight of her students.

The image shows Heier crouched down with her arms around the girls, who are all either barefoot or wearing dance shoes. Heier, as usual, is wearing a big smile. The girls are too, with some showing the gaps of their missing baby teeth.

“She loved dance and she loved the kids,” said coworker and friend Amy Yarberry. “She made me realize that sports can be more than just that … It can really be a family. Just the impact that she made on everyone, it’s going to be felt for a long time. There’s a giant hole in all of our hearts.”

Heier of Sedgwick died in a three-vehicle crash on Sept. 11 on I-135 north near 85th in Park City. She was 21 and is survived by her parents and three siblings.

“Her three siblings were built-in best friends from late night Braum’s or Taco Bell runs to roping their parents into crazy shenanigans, there was always a lot of laughter,” her obituary reads, adding she “prided herself on being her mama’s mini me and having her daddy wrapped around her pinky.”

Courtney Buffalo knew Heier for years after her daughter, Tabitha, and Heier started dancing together and became good friends. Buffalo and Heier also worked together.

“There’s been just overwhelming support from our dance families and communities. She really made a mark on a lot more people than she would have ever imagined … everybody is going to miss her quite a bit,” Buffalo said. “She was very happy all the time and when she wasn’t, she would be after she danced.”

Childhood friends and coworkers described Heier as bubbly, funny and someone whose life was surrounded by dance. In addition to dance, she also liked to paint and “bejewel everything she owned,” her obituary reads.

Dance brought Katelyn Heier out of her shell

Heier’s “love of dance and music started at the age of 3 and carried her throughout her entire life,” her obituary says.

Heier had already been dancing before she transferred to Newton Performing Arts Center around middle school.

During that first year in Yarberry’s tap class, the 35-year-old could barely get Heier to talk. That soon changed and the harder problem was getting her to stop, Yarberry said.

“Once she decided that dance was her life is when we saw the true Katelyn come out,” she said. “She just had such a captivating personality when she danced … She drew all of your attention for all of the right reasons. She was incredible. And then to watch her go from that to teaching was pretty special.”

When Yarberry started dating her husband, Brian, she decided to quickly introduce him to her life in dancing by bringing him to a competition. Heier walked right up to him and chatted his ear off, Yarberry said.

After that, whenever he came around, Heier and a small group of other girls would always look at him and point to their ring finger. They also bugged him about proposing.

“Every time. Every single time. They would pester him and he just took it like a champ,” Yarberry said. “She loved me and so she wanted to see me happy.”

The motion to her finger was also made more mainstream in Beyonce’s song, “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).”

Heier loved Beyonce and Michael Jackson. She saw Beyonce in concert and went with the Buffalos to see a Michael Jackson impersonator at The Cotillion.

She also dressed as Michael Jackson during a staff Halloween party at NPAC.

Jamming out to Michael Jackson

Brianne Catlin said she and Heier would sit in each other’s cars before school at Sedgwick High and jam out.

Michael Jackson was a regular in those jam sessions.

“I’m pretty sure she knew Thriller (dance) like front to back,” Catlin said.

During Heier’s time at Sedgwick, the school was without someone to wear the Cardinal mascot outfit.

“She renamed the cardinal Cosmo and she was the mascot,” Kalin Rowley said. “We didn’t have a mascot and she didn’t think it was fair.”

Heier eventually had to choose between her mascot obligations and dance.

Dance prevailed.

But that didn’t mean she didn’t have fun outside of the sport. Catlin remembers the two dressing up in different costumes during homecoming week, including as tourists and dimes.

“She was just the funniest person,” Catlin said, adding that Heier would also make her cry when she braided her hair for softball.

Heier graduated from Sedgwick in 2021.

Heier started teaching and taking on more responsibility at NPAC.

“That was her world,” Rowley said. “She loved her students more than anything and they loved her. That was everything to her. Every time you talked to her she talked about how … well they were doing and how proud she was of them.”

Teaching and babysitting

Heier and Yarberry went from being student and teacher to coworkers and friends. Heier also started babysitting Yarberry’s daughters, 3-year-old Adalyn and 1-year-old Hadley.

Adalyn, who Heier also coached, loves the movie Frozen.

Heier bought her an Elsa costume. She also bought one for herself.

The two often dressed up as Elsa when Heier babysat and would put out their hands and make a noise like they were using their powers to make stuff out of ice.

“She was never too cool for anything,” Yarberry said. “She would like to call herself a second mother to my kids.”

Yarberry said Heier loved teaching hip-hop and loved working with her students. She was especially fond of the youngest kiddos who started as young as 2.

“The little kids loved her just because of her bubbly personality,” Yarberry said. “She just loved the babies. She loved them hard””

Heier’s talents led her to getting more responsibility, including choreographing and teaching entire dances for the competition team.

One of the last songs her team performed was called “Lemonade Stand” and used a lemonade stand prop that Heier and her father, Kevin Heier, who gave her the nickname “Shortcake” as a child, had built.

“She was the shining light in her family,” her obituary says. “Always bringing silly phrases and laughter to everyone she touched with her beautiful smile and personality. Her love for her people was something fierce.”