Bridgewater, Va. – Bridgewater College’s Dance Team, a casualty of the SRA process, was removed from the Bridgewater Eagles Fan Center, is now trying to rebrand itself.

“When Bridgewater was going through the SRA process, the dance team was originally told we were being combined with the cheer team,” said senior Anna Grove. “Now that we are not viewed as a team by the school anymore, it’s hard to get recognition.”

The dance team being cut also made it hard to retain the membership the team had after already struggling to keep members throughout the pandemic.

“Well, we lost all our members after the end of football season last year, but we gained a member this year, so we went from zero to two, but by next semester we will have five members at least,” said Grove.

During the SRA process, BC said they were cutting the dance team due to lack of members. At the time of the decision the dance team had around 11 members.

Because of the lack of membership on the dance team, they were forced to sit out of the football season after being told that they could still dance during the game even though they are not a team.

According to the athletics websites for Roanoke College and Shenandoah University, they have nine to ten members on average.

“You would not know there is a dance team if you did not go to the first two or three games of the season, and even if you did, we were pushed into a corner because there were not that many of us,” said Grove.

Grove asked Student Life if they would promote the dance team in the weekly “This Week at BC” emails so they could reach more students since the coach used to make advertisements in the dance community with her own money.

“We do not get as much advertisement as we used to get, especially because we do not have a coach and most of our advertising was done through her,” said Grove.

Finding a coach has been harder since the team is now only being recognized as a club. The dance team, along with student life, is reaching out to JMU’s dance performance majors to see if one of them is interested in taking the role of coach.

“I am currently holding three roles for the dance team right now,” said Grove. “I have the role of coach, choreographer and captain, but honestly I would do anything for this team if it meant I got to finish out my senior year dancing in front of people again.”