When Sarah Taft wears her Oregon Club Sports dance team jacket around campus, she receives many curious looks.
“People have approached me to ask what the dance team is all about,” said Taft, a junior.
Some may remember watching them perform at the Moshofsky Center during halftime of home football games or at McArthur Court during basketball games.
But they are not cheerleaders, nor are they associated with the flag team — two of the groups sponsored by the Oregon Department of Intercollegiate Athletics.
Rather, this team is funded through the Club Sports department and is held together solely by its members’ dedication and shared love of dance.
The Oregon dance team, formerly known as Dance Force, was started three years ago by a couple of disgruntled University students. After being barred from the flag team, the two girls decided to form a dance team of their own. With the help of Club Sports, they managed to acquire a budget and recruit a large enough group to form a squad.
Today, the team’s roster has grown to 13 members, but it still has no coach and a limited budget.
“It’s really difficult not having a coach,” Taft said. “We have 13 girls, all with different opinions and ideas, throwing them out there at the same time.”
Freshman Laura Kizer agrees that the hardest thing about being on the team is the lack of organization and the lack of leadership.
“Coming from high school and having three coaches, it was very different,” Kizer said. “I think we did pretty good [this year], considering.”
Because all coaching for Club Sports teams must be done on a volunteer basis, the team opted to elect a captain, someone who would act as an authority figure within the team, as well as a coordinator for all team events. This left the dance routine choreography up to the team members themselves.
Carly Spainhower, a senior and three-year veteran of the team, took on the responsibilities of captain this season.
After a stressful and frustrating year as team leader, Spainhower has insisted that in the future the group should elect at least two team members to do the job. One captain would make contacts and handle details for performances and competitions, while the other would choreograph the routines. “It’s too much for one person,” Spainhower said. “It was too much for me.”
Coaching isn’t the only problem facing the team. Along with recruitment difficulties caused by a lack of notoriety, the team also faces monetary problems.
Because the dance team has one of the smallest budgets of the 42 Club Sports teams, most of its money is obtained through sponsors and fundraising, as well as team members paying from out of their own pockets. This money goes toward team expenses such as costumes for games and competitions, stereo equipment and other miscellaneous costs.
The bulk of the fundraising, though, goes toward funding a trip to Las Vegas, Nev., for the annual national competition. “If we had more options and more organization, we would have been able to pull a lot more money in,” Kizer said.
Despite growing interest in the team, the problems with money will continue to be an issue as long as it remains a club sport. Club Sports is fairly limited in its overall budget availability because it is funded through the Erb Memorial Union.
“There are so many clubs and they can only give out so much money,” Taft said. “They do as much as they can for us.”
Spainhower knows that in order for her team to truly become successful, it needs to acquire a coach and have the ability to compete on a larger level. For this to happen, she said, the dance team would have to be taken under the wing of the Athletic Department.
“Other schools we’ve seen [at nationals] have their whole cheerleading squad and dance team perform together,” Spainhower said. “They’re both completely funded by their athletic department, and they root each other on at all the events.”
The Oregon dancers, however, are well aware that the possibility of this happening here is remote because they do not provide a money-making opportunity.
Yet, despite the hardships they face and the lack of notoriety they possess, the members of the team continue to work hard for something they truly enjoy doing.
“We’re people who really know what we love to do, and we’ll go to extreme measures to keep doing it,” Taft said. “I mean, here we are, practicing three hours a day, and nobody even knows we exist.”
While a few members of the Oregon team are interested in careers in dance, most of them are in it for the sheer fun of it all. “It’s not all work,” Taft said. “We’re all good friends, too.”
As of now, it is uncertain which route the dance team will take, though the team does not have many options. “Well, hopefully one day someone in a high place will say, ‘Hey, we’re the University of Oregon, why don’t we have a dance team?’” Spainhower said. “Until that happens, the team will never be quite where we want it to be.”
For now, hard work and determination will have to do. Kizer said the most important thing is to gain recognition because with it comes more support for the team.
And until the team members can find somebody willing to coach them, they’ll continue the struggle on their own. “There are a lot of forces working against us, but we’ll keep trying to make a name for ourselves,” Taft said.
As for all the hard work the dancers put in, the question remains: Is it worth it?
Like many student athletes, their answer is yes. The members of the Oregon dance team appreciate the stress relief, the sense of accomplishment and the opportunity to perform for crowds.
But, most of all, they do it for fun.
“The most rewarding thing,” Taft said, “is I get to do what I love most, and that’s dance.”