What it means to be on a college dance team

As a freshman on the BU dance team, I can honestly say that when I joined the team back in September I had no idea what that even meant. It’s now the end of March and with nationals only two weeks away, I realized that I have learned more on this team in a year than I could have ever imagined.

A college dance team is not a group of girls who merely cheers for the other athletics teams (Although we love you BU basketball). We are an athletics team and we train like it too.
I am more-motivated from being on the team and it’s only been one year.

It’s time-consuming

When you’re not practicing, you’re still practicing. Whether it’s walking down the street to class with your headphones in while hitting each pom motion as strangers glare at you, or annoying your roomie by constantly practicing hip-hop tricks on your bed and making her video them, the practice never ends. Yes, you may wake up at 7am for your classes and realize you will not see your bed again for more than 12 hours, but I promise you that going to bed after a rigorous practice is so much more rewarding.

It will push you to a place beyond your limits that you didn’t even know existed

My older teammates would always yell, “You’re stronger than you think you are” and “push through” during our practices and I never knew what that meant until we ran our routine three times in a row. For those of you on college dance teams, you know that running a routine once is brutal and three times is nearly impossible. After the second time, you will feel like you can’t push anymore and then the music plays and your teammates tell you one more time to “push through” and you discover a strength within yourself to get through the moves just one last time. In that moment, you become a stronger dancer and a stronger person. This work ethic translates into the classroom as well. Anything you want to do is possible because as my teammates and coach have taught me we’re all stronger than we think we are.

Teammates are family

Dance team is a home away from home. Dance team is the most strenuous and athletic type of dancing I’ve ever done in my 15 years of training and because of this, you form a bond with your teammates that nobody can ever fully understand. You share a common end goal… to kick ass at nationals. It’s different than a sorority bond or your high school dance studio because you are all fighting together to achieve one award. There are no solos or competition; the team is one unit. Your teammates and your coach will see you on your best and worst days of your college career and they will accept you and help you through it. On a college dance team, you’re never alone.

Games aren’t just for fun and to look pretty – they are part of the training

Of course having full makeup on and our hair perfectly curled to cheer on our basketball players is loads of fun, but we’re there to focus. Every arm that is hit on the sidelines is practice for the nationals floor. Every routine we perform during time outs and halftime is videoed so that we can analyze what went right and wrong and we can progress towards having a perfect routine. Sparkly uniforms just make the training more exciting than a regular practice. But any girl on a dance team in college knows, games are important to teach us how to perform with our adrenaline pumping from an audience.

The work is worth it

I have learned through dance team that the amount of work that goes into something is the result you will get at the end. Since September, my coach has spoken to us about nationals and how every second counts. As a freshman in September, it was hard for me to visualize an event that seemed so far away. But now as NDA Nationals approaches in two weeks in Daytona Beach, Florida, I can reflect back on all the grueling practices all year and realize that the work was worth it. The team is ready to push through these two weeks together as we finalize everything we have worked for all year to compete as one on the bandshell out in Daytona.