TCU Elite Dance Team Finds Success

By Rachel Wilson
TCU Daily Skiff

It's the group's inaugural season, and TCU Elite is already off to a running start.

The team recently won dance awards at two national competitions, said TCU Elite Director Megan McDonald.

In March, the team went to the American Dance and Drill Competition in Denton and placed second, beating the Southern Methodist University team, which has won the past five years, said McDonald, a junior Spanish major.

Earlier this month, the team flew to Daytona, Fla., for the National Dance Alliance Nationals after receiving a bid to attend.

In Daytona, the team didn't score enough points to make it to the final round, but the team danced in the Challenge Cup and won first place, which secured it a spot in the finals, where they finished No. 7 at Daytona, McDonald said.

Mallary McGrath, a senior math major, said dancing in Daytona was a thrill.

"When (we heard) that we made it to finals all we could do was jump up and down screaming," she said, adding that both events were a great achievement for a first-year team. "Performing at finals was a great feeling and probably one of my most memorable college experiences."

McDonald said that usually a team must attend NDA summer camp to receive a bid for Nationals, but TCU Elite made the cut after submitting a video of the group's dances to the organization.

For McDonald, the team's biggest accomplishment is not the awards they have won, but the fact that the members did it on their own.

Members of the student-run team raised the funds for its Florida trip, approximately $1,000 a dancer for 14 dancers, completely on their own.

McGrath said this season with TCU Elite has been a highlight of her college experience.

"I competed with a local dance studio in high school, but being part of a collegiate team has been a whole new experience," she said. "In many ways it seems much more serious, and the competition is much higher."

McDonald came up with the idea after an injury in 2008 sidelined her from her TCU Showgirls rehearsals.

2010-11 Auditions

When: Saturday, August 28

Time and place will be announced later at www.campusrec.tcu.edu.