St. Cloud State Dance Brings Home 7th National Title

Article by Olivia Simonson. Photo by Rouse Productions.

Universal Dance Association (UDA) Nationals, more commonly referred to as “The Dance Super bowl”, occurs during the third weekend of January every year. With teams coming in from almost every university in the country, the stakes are high as they all compete to win their division’s national champion title. Minnesota universities alone brought home five of these titles – with the National game day Champion title going to the St. Cloud State University Dance Team.  

The St. Cloud State University Dance Team has a never-ending season that leads up to these three days in January. It starts with the recruitment process, and when teams are announced in April, practices begin.  

“We start doing optional practices in May,” says Reese Amundsen, one of the team’s captains this season. “We officially start like the first week of June. We spend about a week on campus practicing and then a week at home doing zoom practices. We practice through June, then July, and then we leave for UDA camp in August.”  

The team has both a winter and a fall season, but they only compete once out of both of those seasons. The fall season includes cheering on St. Cloud State University athletics – from soccer to basketball to wrestling to volleyball. In their winter season, they perform at a variety of shows before they leave for nationals.  

“We do a couple shows, a home show, and then some high school shows, and then we do Best of the Best as well,” said Amundsen. 

The team learns three routines – pom poms, jazz, and game day. Each routine utilizes different techniques to make it different than the previous category. The team then spends all of their time from September to January perfecting those routines for the two to three minutes they spend on that stage. If they are ranked within the top half, they advance to semis, and then to finals.  

“Game day is about a three-minute-long routine,” said Erin Nelson, another one of the team’s captains this season. “You use pom-poms and other crowd engaging tools, like signs. This year we were able to bring blizzard, which was super fun to dance with our mascot. [game day] Includes a dance to our school’s fight song, a sideline chant, a band dance, and then a performance routine at the very end.” 

Pom includes more skills and utilizes certain techniques while holding pom poms to perform. The jazz category tells more of a story and allows the dancers to show their artistry alongside their skills.  Their goal this season wasn’t necessarily to win, but to perform to their best on that floor. The team bought home 4th place trophies in both categories.    

“It was extremely rewarding,” said Nelson, who now holds five national titles with the St. Cloud State University dance team. “Last season definitely came as a surprise and was a wakeup call. This year, we had different goals than we’ve had in previous years. We really focused on the controllable and ourselves.” 

The final captain of the team, Hannah Olson, shared about the moment they knew they had won. 

“For semis, you get placed into who’s going to finals, and they rank you. We were in fifth, and then we’re waiting on the stage [for the trophy], and they’re announcing No. 5… No. 4… No. 3.. and then they didn’t say us for third. And then we’re thinking we either got first or second, and then they announced second, and we all realized we got first, and it was so unexpected. And going from No. 5 to No.1 just made it so much better.” 

 

The team also puts tremendous amount of effort into their season leading up to nationals. The team is entirely self-funded, with the dancers either paying for it themselves or fundraising around the community to come up with the money. When it comes to practices, the closer the team gets to nationals, the harder practices are.  

“We have two-a-day practices, which are two separate practices that are each three to four hours long. Some of the days we had mock nationals and had a 14-hour day,” said Olson. 

The captains calculated the total hours from the end of December up until they left for nationals. The team danced 160 hours in that time frame alone.  

“We had 21 days of two-a-days total from the month December to January,” said Amundsen. 

Alongside their new title, the team is also celebrating 30 years of dance this season and has been expressing their gratitude to not only their current dance families, but to their alumni as well. 

“We owe so much to our legacy,” said Amundsen. “There’s just been so much that has happened since the beginning with this program and this team, and we’ve gained a lot of recognition since then from the University as well. Without those teams before us, we wouldn’t have anything right now.” 

Some of the team’s alumni have continued their dance career past St. Cloud State University and have gone on to dance for NFL teams, including the Minnesota Vikings Cheerleaders and the Buccaneers Cheerleaders. But some alumni come back to cheer on the current team and to step up and help as well.  

“A lot more recent alumni love to stay in touch and help us out,” said Nelson who will graduate in May. “Our head coach and our assistant coach are alumni of us, and to see how much they’ve put into the program and helped us get to where we are, it really speaks volumes to what our team is all about and how much we all care for it.”  

Some dancers are also graduating this year, making this next season their first as an St. Cloud State University alumni. Olson will be continuing her education elsewhere for graduate school and feels that bringing home this title is a good ending to her dance journey at St. Cloud State University.  

“Having that accomplishment and all our hard work pay off, it was just so gratifying and so amazing. And just seeing the look on the freshmen’s faces when they win their first title and then being like ‘Oh my god I did that four years ago’. And then this is your last one. It’s definitely crazy, but it’s also a full circle moment and feels well completed and accomplished.  

While they are grateful for their past, the team is already looking to the future, planning recruitments and preparing for the next season while finishing out this year too.  

“Right off the bat, we’re continuing to do basketball games and the like, so we’ll still be on campus and involved in the community. The next team is officially being announced soon, so we’re excited about the next year too,” said Amundsen.