Dancing for 'Dear Ol' Rutgers'
Archived article from Nov 6, 1998
By Douglas Frank
Participation in the dance and cheer teams is largely a labor of love. There is practice three nights a week and performance at all home football and basketball games. The rewards are few: a varsity letter and the satisfaction that you are helping your teams on to victory.
"All year you are providing support and it's hard to tell how good you are," says Christine Zoffinger, in her second year as head coach of both teams at Rutgers.
But every January, all that changes when the Universal Dance Association and Universal Cheerleading Association competitions are held at Disney World in Florida. There, a dozen or so teams, culled from among hundreds of schools, vie for the title of best in the land.
Zoffinger knows firsthand what it takes to get there. She was a member of the first Rutgers dance team that qualified, in 1993, her junior year. After graduation she became assistant coach in charge of the dance team, a position she held until 1997 when Rutgers placed second.
In 1998, her first year as head coach, she and the team brought home all the marbles, when Rutgers won the national championship in the dance-team competition.
"It was a pretty good year," she says with a lilt in her voice, agreeing modestly that it was quite a feat for a first-year coach working part time while attending graduate school.
But she quickly acknowledges the work of the young women who are her charges. Speaking as a former dancer and now coach, she notes: "It's a lot of hard work, but it's a lot of fun and just a great experience. Some the dancers are dance majors from the Mason Gross School of the Arts and others have danced most of their lives in studios around the state or were part of high-school dance teams."
Currently the team numbers 15 women and is looking forward to competing again for a national title despite the loss of six veterans to graduation. "We're hoping to repeat, and we've been working really hard. It's a subjective competition; you don't know what each judge will be looking for and you have to cover all bases -- crowd appeal and technical skills. That's why it's such an accomplishment when you win."
The cheer team is a 22-member coed squad whose members have a gymnastic rather than dance background. The team didn't compete in Florida last year because of injuries, but is working hard to qualify for the competition in January. "They are a young team and have the potential to be very strong this year," Zoffinger says.
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