Coaches Corner

Teaching responsibility

This is What Happens When You Teach Accountability to Your Dancers

I believe one of the biggest challenges facing coaches today is fostering accountability on a team. What's more upsetting to me though, is that it wasn't nearly as much of a problem 15-20 years ago. While accountability on the team used to…

2 Steps to Make Sure You Can Compete in Any Context

As coaches, we can all get in a rut sometimes where our practice structure gets repetitive. We have a similar warmup every day, we do similar drills for turns and jumps. We work on choreography, run it a few times full out and then rinse and…

Coach Interview: Kelley Tafazzoli, University of Tennessee

Tell us your dance story and how you became the coach at Tennessee. I am not a Tennessee native, I’m originally from PA. I’m a Yankee but now I live in the south so I bring a little of that brashness with me. I grew up a studio kid,…

To the Coach Who Won't Settle Until They Reach Perfection

Dear Perfectionist Coaches, I know there are so many emotions during all of the little moments throughout the competition season, and we have a  standard of perfection. Helping everyone get their hair and makeup done, walking to the warm-up…
Passion for

A Passion for Coaching: Is it making you better or weighing you down?

“Do it with passion, or not at all.” We’ve all heard it. If you aren’t going to be passionate on the floor and give it everything you have, then don’t bother. If you want to be better, if you want to be the best, you have to be passionate…
dance team inspiration

Top 5 Unique Ways to Bring Inspiration to Your Dancers

We could all use a little extra dose of inspiration sometimes. Whether it’s a typical season and you’re in the grind of daily cleaning practices, or you’re in quarantine 2020 and struggling to motivate the team… coaches often need to…
TJ Maple

Coach Interview: T.J. Maple of Stephen F. Austin University

Tell us about your background and how this coaching career came to be for you.  I didn’t have the opportunity to be on a dance team in high school. Growing up in the 90s it wasn’t acceptable. This all really came about through natural…
dance team

How to Clean a Dance Routine and Improve Team Unity in Your Dance Team

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Love it or hate it, dance coaches spend HOURS every season cleaning routines for their dance team. Whether it’s just a surface cleaning for a quick tailgate routine or an in-depth down-to-the-pinkie-finger-placement cleaning of a competition…

What to Say When You Don't Know How to Help

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Sometimes it’s really hard to know what to say. As coaches, we feel like we should always show up and have everything figured out in front of our team. We are supposed to know how to help. But there's a fine line where you don't want…