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Over the weekend, the UC Dance Team won a national title. For what? How did they do it? For that, I talked to dance team member Ashley Herman. She is a senior. She was very nice and very informative with her answers to my questions.
I asked Ashley about preparation, injuries, the feeling of a killer routine, how she ended up on the dance team and more. Questions are in bold.
If people don't know, can you tell them what category you and the dance team won the national title?
We placed first in Division 1A Hip Hop at the UDA National College Championship in Orlando.
What kind of preparation goes into coming up with a winning routine?
We do a lot of things to prepare for competition and getting our routine ready. We start off in the summer with workouts and going to camp. After camp we continue workouts and have practice 4 days a week. We also had several choreographers come in to teach us choreography this year. After we learn the material, we continue to tweak the choreography and music until we feel it has every beat, hit & musicality we want for a winning routine. We didn’t have our routine the way we wanted it until about 2 weeks before the competition.
What would you compare the feeling of performing a killer routine to? Something like hitting a home run or scoring a touchdown or writing a great Q&A or is it something more than that?
The feeling of performing a killer routine is one of the most amazing feelings I’ve ever experienced. Just knowing all the hours we put in and all the hard work we do comes down to one shot to get it perfect. Almost a year of preparation goes into two minutes on the floor. One mistake can take you from first to fifth and you know that pressure is there. Hearing all your friends and family in the audience yelling before you go on the stage is an adrenaline rush. Seeing their faces when you go out on the stage gives you more energy than you can imagine. When the music starts something in your body takes over especially during a hip hop routine. There are so many different styles in hip hop and you have to change your expressions to go with all the different songs. We had an unexpected twist to our routine this year that really set us a part. Dancing on stage you could look out and feel everyone’s energy in the room. Performing on stage with your team, knowing how much each girl next to you wants the win, and the fire we all have inside us to perform to the best of our ability is unimaginable.
Do you build things around music or do you add music to the dancing after you have it down? That could be a horrible question but I've always been curious about it.
That’s actually a really good question. Usually you would have the music and then choreograph to it but when we have choreographers come in sometimes instead of using the music they give to us we just take the choreography. We find music that we think fits our routine the best and then make the choreography fit to the music we choose. Up until nationals we continue to keep switching the music and choreography until we figure out what we think will make the perfect routine.
What were the highlights of the trip, outside of becoming champions?
Obviously becoming a national champion was the highlight of our trip but also the way the crowd reacted to our routine this year. We had so many people come up to us and say how much they loved our routine and that they were rooting for us to win. We made an impact on the competition & set the bar high and it was a great feeling. Especially because at this point we didn’t know what the results were but we knew no matter what happened that everyone was impressed with what we did. On top of that getting to make memories with my team and all the new freshmen getting their first experience at college nationals was a great highlight.
How did you end up joining the dance team?
I ended up joining the dance team because I always danced. I knew I wanted to continue dancing after high school so I started looking into colleges with dance teams. I never knew much about dance teams but after I found out about UC’s dance team and visited the college I knew it’s where I wanted to go.
What are some of your best memories since you've been at Cincinnati?
I’ve had a lot of great memories being at UC but I think winning this national championship is probably the best one. I’ve had a really great year with this team. We’ve become a family and it’s the best year I’ve had as a member. Being my senior year, I couldn’t of asked for a better way to end my dance career at UC by winning a National Title with a team & coaching staff I love & respect.
What's the hardest thing that you do that people on the outside, like me, either don't know or don't think about being on a national championship dance team?
One of the hardest things we do and what I don’t think people think about is the amount of time we put into our team practices. On top of keeping our grades up in school, we’re at practice four days a week and during nationals season even more. We practiced 30 hour+ weekends at certain times. There’s a lot of preparation into executing a synchronized routine that has the power & passion we want it to.
I would imagine injuries are common in everything athletic, have you ever been hurt?
We run into a lot of injuries on our team. I’ve had a pulled hamstring, and I had a hip problem this year where I could barely walk. But overall, I have been very lucky. We had a girl sprain her ankle two weeks before competition this year so we had to re work our routines to add someone else in because she couldn’t compete. We also had girls with shin splints, ankle problems, and knee problems and still competed this weekend. A lot of time we have to push through injuries because it’s not like football where we have a lot of extras on the sideline to fill spots when someone has an injury. Dancing is a lot of work on our bodies that people don’t realize.
Many thanks to Ashley Herman for her great answers. Be sure to support her and the rest of the UC dance team. They are awesome and deserve our support. CHAMPS.
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