St Kate's Dance Team Takes on California

The St. Kate’s Dance Team at Nationals. Alexandra Nelson, Lauryn Swanson, Grace Roscoe, Trista Peitz, Brooklynn Richardson, Emma Proefrock and Ellie Shields)

By Mia Timlin

On Feb. 25 and 26, St. Kate’s dance team attended the USA Collegiate Championships in Anaheim, Calif., and competed a dance in the jazz category, finishing out the weekend in sixth place. This achievement came after a long and intensive process of rehearsing and lift training that began as early as September, not taking into account the effort that was already being put into court routines to be performed at campus sporting events.

The routine the dance team prepared for nationals this year (which you can watch on Instagram) was a departure from more recent seasons. “In college there’s three divisions you can pick from,” says coach Alexa Boderman. “We haven’t done jazz since 2016 but we decided based off the team that it would be a really good decision for our dancers.”

Boderman felt that entering in the jazz category, as opposed to pom which has been the norm for the team the past several years, gave them more freedom as dancers — down to the song that she said she heard and immediately knew would be a perfect fit for the group she was working with this season.

The team brought in guest choreographer Derrick Schrader to put together the piece in September, which took two days of six hour practices to learn, and have been polishing it ever since. “The process of preparation [for Nationals] was very tedious and difficult and long,” says Brooklynn Richardson ‘26 (Exercise in Sports Science, Pre-Physical Therapy). “We practiced at least once a week with that routine for three hours.”

Boderman challenges her dancers, but her expectations, she says, are there to make them better, and not just as dancers. “We want [them] to be strong women and leaders. We want them to go off in the world once they graduate being strong women and leaders,” she says. “Beyond that, it’s always ‘do your best,’ and it’s always about making sure that they’re pushing themselves, they’re growing as dancers, they’re getting better.”

After a snowstorm, three canceled flights and a handful of delays, the dance team checked into their California hotel at 1 a.m. — 3 a.m. Minnesota time. For Boderman, it’s tradition to plan a couple of surprises for her dancers, one of which was a limo to take them from LAX, which they missed. Despite the rocky start, the hotel stay was a bonding experience for the team. “When we were getting ready we were jumping back and forth between rooms. We had music blasting,” says Richardson, describing the process of preparing to go to the first day of the competition, which took place at a convention center.

The dance team in a limo after nationals.

“We got lost walking around,” says Grace Roscoe ‘26 (Psychology). “It’s huge and there’s all these stages set up.” The competition runs on strict schedules and rules, and gives each group a mark time which allows them to warm up on a surface that will be similar to the stage they’ll be competing on. “You have eight minutes and after that you can’t do any dancing or tricks,” Roscoe says. Richardson and Roscoe say that going into the competition as first-years was nerve-wracking, as things moved very quickly and there was a factor of intimidation from watching the other teams practicing around them.

After competing on the first day, Boderman received the critiques from the judges, and the scores weren’t what the team was hoping for. “They wanted us to morph into the class stick-dance team kind of vibe, but we took the corrections that the judges gave us and we sharpened stuff up,” Richardson says. “We all went into Coach’s room and we talked about what we could improve on. We were all very willing to go through every little bit on our score sheet.”

“We always said we were ‘hangry,’” says Roscoe when talking about the process of cleaning up the dance that night. “We were a little frustrated and for sure hungry to do it again.”

The hangry-ness paid off however, as they spent the evening implementing some of the corrections from the judges and came out of the experience with a ranking that left them in the top six and just fractions of points away from the teams that finished ahead of them. “We always have to stay true to us and to our story,” says Boderman when talking about walking her team through the judges’ corrections. “There’s critiques that you can’t quite change at the last minute, and at the end of the day you just have to go out and do it. Dance as hard as you can.”

According to Boderman, the most important thing is that the dance team represents kindness, strength and leadership every time they go out. She wants the dance team to be something St. Kate’s is proud to claim, and in turn wants St. Kate’s to be something her dancers proudly represent. “When they’re out on the floor it’s about being captivating. It’s about bringing something to the table that no other team is bringing so when you watch it you go ‘that’s St. Kate’s,’” she says. “It’s about being legendary to St. Kate’s and that’s what we’re all about. Being our own legendary legends.”