One week ago today, Dr. Stephanie Luke woke up with a pretty good reason to wonder if the night before had really happened.

She had danced the jive in front of a packed crowd, pulled off a surprise jump, conquered a serious case of nerves and, by the end of last Saturday night, walked away with the 2026 Stepping Out for Education Mirrorball trophy.

It wasn’t a dream.

Luke, a Lake County School Board member and associate vice president of Academic Affairs at Lake-Sumter State College, had officially danced her way to the top during the Educational Foundation of Lake County’s 20th anniversary Stepping Out for Education fundraiser, held July 31 and Aug. 1 at the Venetian Center in Leesburg.

And after weeks of rehearsals, plenty of practice at home and a few bruises to show for it, the longtime educator and sports mom had done something she and her husband have spent years encouraging their own children to do: Trust your preparation. Embrace the pressure. Step into your moment and own it.

“After I won, I told my husband it felt really good to be able to put my money where my mouth is with my kids,” Luke says. “We’ve been saying to them for so long, ‘Show up big in this moment. You were made for this moment. You need to slow the game down and perform in the moments when it matters.’ And here I was. I had to step into that moment.”

And put her money where her mouth is she did.

Luke earned Top Rising Star honors and was crowned the 2026 Mirrorball champion. She also won the Audience Choice Award during the two-night competition.

Not bad for someone who insists she is not a dancer.

Luke was a cheerleader in high school but says that hardly prepared her for what she was getting herself into when she agreed to participate. At first, she figured she was outgoing, didn’t embarrass easily and could have some fun with it.

Then she started learning the jive.

“The dance moves are challenging, and trying to remember, when your feet are doing this, your head needs to do this, and then you need to hold your hands this way,” Luke says. “And then it’s really fast.”

The celebrity dancers completed 20 hours of official dance training ahead of the event, but Luke put in plenty of extra practice at home.

“My kids laugh because they know different parts of my dance just from practicing it at home with me and watching me do it so many times,” she says.

Professional dance instructor Marcus Vinicius Viana helped turn all that practice into a polished routine, keeping the choreography manageable before fine-tuning everything from Luke’s hands to her movements.

He also had a little competitive strategy up his sleeve.

The pair performed one ending Friday, then returned Saturday with a different one featuring a bigger jump, giving judges who had watched both nights something they weren’t expecting.

“They were like, ‘Wait a second. You did not do that last night,’” Luke says. “I thought he was so smart for doing that. It was a surprise.”

Of course, Luke can appreciate all the fun of it now.

By Thursday’s dress rehearsal, she was calling her husband from the car.

“I am severely questioning my life choices right now,” Luke recalls telling him. “I feel sick to my stomach, and I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

She wasn’t alone.

The local celebrity dancers were educators, businesspeople and community members, not professional performers, and after weeks of rehearsing together, Luke says they shared the very real fear of putting themselves out there in front of hundreds of people.

“We have trauma because of this sense of, ‘Oh my gosh, I could really go out here and embarrass myself really badly,’” she says.

Luke made it through Friday just fine.

In fact, she won the Audience Choice Award.

That created an entirely new problem.

“I thought after Friday night, because we did it once, it would be easier on Saturday night, and I almost feel like it was harder,” Luke says. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I already won last night. What if I don’t win tonight?’”

That’s when years of giving pep talks from the sidelines came back around.

Luke and her husband have watched their daughters compete at high levels in softball, including state championships, national competition and college athletics. Her oldest daughter plays college softball, while her 17-year-old daughter is committed to Boston College.

Luke even asked her oldest if the pressure she was feeling was what it felt like to step into the batter’s box during a big game.

Her daughter told her yes.

So, Mom stepped into her own big moment.

Luke’s children were there to watch, along with nieces, nephews, cousins and other family members. Afterward, her 16-year-old nephew sent her a message telling her how amazing she had done, the kind of unsolicited compliment from a teenager that carries a little extra weight.

But her favorite validation came even closer to home.

“When your own children are proud of you, that’s a mom win, right?” Luke says.

By Saturday, the competition had intensified. Luke had watched the other dancers improve throughout rehearsals, and now she was watching them deliver some of their best performances when it mattered.

After her own final dance, something shifted.

“It was like all this pressure came off,” Luke says. “It’s finished, I left it all out there and it was a great cause.”

“The outcome really wasn’t as important on Saturday night, it’s like all this pressure came off,” She says. “It was more about, ‘we did it.’

“We danced, everybody did good and it was all for a great cause.”

Then they called her name.

“It was a little bit overwhelming,” Luke says. “Sure, I’m really excited that it was me that was announced, but at the same time, you want everybody to be recognized for all the amazing things they had accomplished, as well.”

The dancers weren’t the only ones who showed up big.

The Educational Foundation raised more than $258,000 through sponsorships and donations during its 20th anniversary event. An additional $110,000 through the Consortium of Florida Education Foundations School District Education Foundation Matching Grant Program brought the total impact to more than $368,000, surpassing the event’s $350,000 fundraising goal.

And because a little friendly competition apparently wasn’t limited to the dance floor, Friday and Saturday audiences continued their running rivalry over which night could raise the most money for local schools.

This year, Friday gets the bragging rights, bringing in more than $65,000 compared with more than $50,000 Saturday.

“For two decades, Stepping Out for Education has been our premier event,” says Dr. Elizabeth Johnson, senior director of the Educational Foundation of Lake County. “But the true highlight is the work we fund all year long.”

The Foundation, established in 1987 as the designated direct-support organization for Lake County Schools, uses community support to fund initiatives including educator recognition and appreciation, reading and literacy programs, scholarships and teacher impact grants.

For Luke, who has spent more than two decades working in education, seeing the community rally around local students and teachers meant as much as anything that happened under the ballroom lights.

“To be at that event and see the attendance and the amount of money that was donated, and the support for what Lake County Schools has done, that was probably, as far as a pride factor outside of the mom moment, the number one thing,” Luke says. “It was all in the name of public education.”

“As far as my educator heart, my cup runneth over in that regard.”

Of course, Luke has a few less sentimental reminders of her brief stint as a competitive dancer.

“I lost weight and I toned up, so it was really good for me physically,” she says. “I got the bruises. I think we all got the bruises to show it.”

With the nerves, rehearsals and competition behind her, she can laugh about it now.

“Looking back, heck yeah, that was so much fun,” Luke says.

And apparently, winning a Mirrorball follows you back to the office.

Luke says she’s already been greeted at work as “the Mirrorball winner,” and colleagues have suggested she reprise her winning moves at an upcoming event.

She has agreed to let her boss use a photo of her performance in a PowerPoint.

An encore is another matter.

“Use the picture, but I’m not dancing,” she says.