Team Feature: Loyola

The Ramblerettes balance service, school spirit, and studio-quality technique. Here’s how the program evolved from a halftime performance squad into a stellar competition team.

by Norm Ramil, 8 Count Audio chief.music.officer & dance.fan

I ran into an ecstatic Loyola Ramblerettes Dance Team as they posed for pictures on Stevenson’s home floor in December. As the snow fell outside, these girls celebrated 2nd place finishes for both varsity and JV while Coach Cindy McLean proudly saved the visuals on her phone. The Loyola dancers also proudly displayed their category awards: 3A grand champions for both jazz and pom, quite a feat considering who they went up against that afternoon.

The Ramblerettes kept up the momentum, earning finalist status for Varsity Brand’s School Spirit Awards. Then came this past weekend’s first-ever Catholic League championship, which the team both hosted and won (a dual victory for JV and Varsity).

Rewind to October when I stopped in to learn about the team. Loyola Academy (casually known as “L.A.”) is a private Catholic school in Winnetka just a couple minutes away from famous New Trier High School. Sure, its public school counterpart is nationally-known, but Loyola’s got a flashy list of alumni, too: Bill Murray, Blackhawks announcer Pat Foley, and several pro and Olympic athletes.

Speaking of athleticism, the girls have weight bands around their ankles when I first walk into the gym. Varsity and JV team up for flexibility and strength conditioning on Tuesdays. “The girls train together as cross-motivation,” explains Coach Cindy McLean, who’s somewhat of a calming presence in the middle of a challenging workout led by their conditioning consultant.

The sets are on the long side. Team leaders call out, “Keep it up!” and “You’re not tired!” Coach McLean adds, “Come on…I know it was a three-day weekend, but put some energy into it.” But it’s still a fun atmosphere, especially as the team literally skips laps around the perimeter of the gym. I hear the girls motivating each other. “Don’t cut corners,” someone reminds her teammates. “We love skipping!” And the most frequent correction coming from the team as they skip around the gym? “Smile!”

Private schools tend to find themselves in class 1A and 2A, but the sizeable enrollment at Loyola Academy puts them in 3A-land. Fourteen girls make up the competition team, while an additional ten dancers make up the year-round “spirit squad.” The Ramblerettes have lots of experience with 10 returning from last year. An abundance of leadership is a nice problem to have: half of the team are seniors, flanked by 2 juniors, 3 sophomores, and 2 freshmen. The team specializes in pom tech, jumps and turns, and connecting skills (jumps into turns, and turns into jumps or leaps).

The Ramblerettes focus on pom and jazz, so it’s those kinds of skills that they specialize in. Trying out for varsity means you’ll be showing off some advanced stuff. Sure, have your triple ready, but they prefer a quad. Fouettes are great, though you need to be able to do changing spots and speeds. And beyond leg holds there are leg hold turns. Besides the usual jumps and flexibility skills, front and side aerials are “not required but highly recommended,” according to Coach M. Same goes for front and back walk-overs.

Assuming you’ve got those skills and make the roster, expect to continue to build on your talents. Studio training is actually a joint varsity-JV activity on Monday nights at a nearby studio. Besides that, these dancers hit the studio on their own time. The varsity girls have to take studio classes besides the team class, and most of the JV dancers build their technique at studios, also. Ramblerette talent is crafted at places like LoMastro in Lake Forest, Studio 22 High Tek in Niles, and Driven-2-Dance in Glenview.

If all of that sounds physically intimidating, there’s also the fun, school-spirit side of wearing the Ramblerette uniform. They try to attend at least one game or meet for each of Loyola’s sports teams, especially the events that salute a team’s seniors. The dance team gets artsy and promotes these events by decorating the senior lockers. The girls travelled to Champaign to support the L.A. football team’s 8A championship game.

Service is a huge aspect of being a Loyola dancer, and it’s also a great way to build relationships among teammates. Throughout the year, the Ramblerettes give their time to Misericordia, an organization devoted to helping people with developmental and physical disabilities. The Loyola dancers volunteer for Candy Days and visit with Misericordia residents when they attend Loyola home games. Besides sweating it out at the Lurie Children’s Hospital Dance Marathon in November, the girls also do a bake sale to raise funds for the event.

The list of team bonding activities has familiar stuff: sleepovers, team dinners, pool parties, and a mother-daughter back to school dinner that the pom moms worked hard to put together. JV and Varsity stay close with a “big sis / little sis” arrangement. But also on the list: “Gymnastics for fun,”writes Coach McLean on the team outline she handed to me.

Working in the gym is a treat whenever volleyball is away. The Loyola Varsity Ramblerettes usually find themselves practicing in the school’s multi-purpose room, with JV headquartered in the cafeteria. This particular gym can be an inspiring place for any team. State and conference title banners decorate the gym walls all the way around, an impressive testament to this private school’s athletic prowess. Recent football and girls basketball state titles scream out from these banners. I’m especially drawn to the boys basketball banners, one of which honors the team that Michael Jordan’s kid played on around a decade ago, right on this floor, with dad and college scouts watching from these bleachers. Also on the wall are reminders of the North Shore lifestyle: achievement banners for sports teams like water polo, rowing, and sailing.

As you know, dance is as much of a mental thing as a physical one. These dancers already have impressive minds by just getting into Loyola and keeping up with the academic demands of a private school. But for team practice, they like to get in the zone, too. Before anything physical, they practice meditation and breathing as a team, visualizing what a successful practice session will look like.

Then comes the stretching, the cardio, and the conditioning for 20-30 minutes. Once a week (including on my visit) a certified trainer comes in to lead the girls through flexibility and acro training. Leading today’s training session is Carrie, one of the “pom moms” and an orthopedic specialist. “We’re putting in the work to prevent overuse injuries, and things like using the wrong muscles,” she explains.

The girls continue their strength and flexibility workout while upbeat songs blast from the bluetooth speaker (ones with a strong shuffle feel, like The Fratellis’ “Chelsea Dagger” and The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Higher Ground”). Meanwhile, Coach McLean and I have a fun time comparing notes of how the seasonal dance schedule used to be back in the day. The reminiscing continues when Assistant Coach Erin Shapiro arrives (she’s just driven from her day job at Warren Township High School). We trade a few memories of the mid-2000s when she danced on Lake Zurich’s team and I did their music. Coach Shapiro proudly remembers how she was part of the early transition toward hip hop routines at LZ.

The training session wraps up and the girls take a short break. Coach McLean announces that they’ll be working specifically on c-jumps. But first, more stretching. She calls out the exercises and plenty of instructional tips, especially during the rocking bridge arch. The veteran coach explains to me that a variety of arch drills helps them prep for good c-jumps. And she shows that, yes, you really can build an entire section of practice on c-jump technique. There’s the spotting (ceiling versus floor), staying aligned, and not bouncing. And a ton of corrections.

After another water break, McLean has the girls partner-up and take video “to see if you’re really doing those corrections.” And those corrections live in a virtual “correction notebook” for each girl and the whole team (though it might be an actual, physical notebook or journal—I couldn’t tell).

By 5:00, the Ramblerettes transition to across-the-floors. Battements, leaps, and calypsos are part of today’s drills. It’s at this point when I really notice how supportive of a group they are—anyone whose skills are still developing gets plenty of encouragement and useable feedback from the more experienced dancers.

Practice finishes up with a cool down and a happy baby stretch. At the end of each practice, these dancers shout “atta-girls” to teammates who shined that day. On top of that, the team and Coach McLean call out the hardest worker each week and name her MVP.

It’s part of the how the Ramblerettes approach success. In fact, it’s pretty revealing how Coach McLean grouped together “team motivation” and “goal setting” in the same section of the cheat sheet she provided me. Goals live on a poster board at every practice, while each dancer shares an individual goal with her teammates. These aren’t just slogans that look good in writing. These girls sit down to review their goals, check where they came up short, and reset new goals for the next time frame.

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Today’s mid-October practice is just a snapshot of the Loyola dance team’s long season. The story started with April tryouts for the non-competition team. Moving into summer, both technique and their camp routine were the Ramblerettes’ priorities at practices. Both Varsity and JV won 1st place and Superior trophies, and Varsity earned the Leadership award. Since the song was “Flowers In Their Hair,” the seniors brought a flower for each team member. Each dancer went around the circle to share what the team meant to them and what their hopes were for the season. “As each girl finished speaking, [the senior] put the flower in her hair,” Coach McLean explains.

The dancers got to show off their hard work at pregame and halftime performances during football season (up to 9 games). Up through October, the Ramblerettes focus on developing strong pom skills and formation awareness. Coach McLean gets super-specific about what she wants in terms of team synchronization: “Spotting together, plie together, hit the tops of jumps together.” And fall is the time to get those second position turns inching closer to 90 degrees.

Come winter, the dancers are devoted to preparing for competitions, plus another 7 or 8 halftime performances during boys’ and girls’ basketball. Loyola Dance is one of Chicagoland’s active UDA teams, so besides the IHSA comps, they look forward to Orlando for Nationals.

Loyola’s a private school, so the dance team works hard to build for the future and attract potential talent. They work with the Junior Ramblerettes who get to perform either a Halloween or holiday routine. Spring clinics and summer camp keep dance on the mind of 4th through 8th graders in the area. The older girls can attend tryout clinics as a preview of what it takes to wear the Ramblerette uniform.

Another aspect of being a private school is that the dance parents shoulder a lot of the team’s expenses. The school takes care of their basic gear—uniforms and bags, for example—along with travel. But in the end, it’s the poms family that keeps the team going. Former Ramblerettes are known to stop by and help with choreography and coaching.

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Browsing through the 8CA archives, the Loyola Dance program doesn’t make any appearances in the records until this decade. That’s because before 2005, Loyola was a halftime performance poms team. Even worse, it was a combined pom/cheer entity. No choreographers, no full-team technical training. “The program adopted the name ‘Ramblerettes’ in 2005 with the intent to build the program into what it is today,” Coach McLean writes.

The Ramblerettes competed in Halftime Illinois for a few years, along with UDA (McLean loves how the UDA teams from Illinois support each other). But moving to IHSA “was like starting all over again,” she says. The restrictive IHSA calendar “shifted our philosophy on managing the season and goal-setting.” Her 2014-15 team got to state and scored 30th. The JV Ramblerettes took home a 2nd in open dance and a 4th in open pom at the Team Dance Illinois (TDI) state contest in 2013. On the UDA side, Loyola’s been a strong contender over the past several seasons. They broke into the top 10 at Nationals in 2013 with a 7th in Pom along with a 15th in Jazz.

Working on the school’s administrative staff keeps Coach McLean accessible to her team. She started out as the JV coach for a couple seasons, and has since served as the Varsity coach for fourteen years. And back in the day, she captained her own dance team at Niles West back before IDTA even existed, back when pom squads often had student-run practices and informal competitions. It was the era of park district dance, when studio training was reserved for the few. On top of that, “Girls couldn’t do competitive sports officially,” she recalls.

It’s amazing to pause and think about all of the changes she’s witnessed in this sport over the decades. She hopes that dancing on her team “provides experiences to create memories that will last a lifetime,” she writes. You can see it in her coaching philosophy: to “encourage everyone’s love for dance and for each other, creating good friends and teammates.”

It’s about fun but also becoming “stronger, more confident dancers.” Despite a very easy-going personality, her coaching agenda also has another very specific and lofty goal, one you don’t usually see. She wants to “provide a dance program that gives dancers the skills to major in dance or dance on a college team.”

McLean hopes that being a Ramblerette helps her girls learn to “self-advocate, learn how to step out of their comfort zone to solve their individual and team conflicts.” She’s designed the dance program to output not only excellent dancers but also effective leaders. But that’s not just for after graduation. Under the leadership of their coaches and choreographers, team members have to offer their own input so that they gain a sense of ownership in what happens. It’s part of the Ramblerettes’ spirit of inclusion.

JV Coach Erin Shapiro, who’s expecting her first child, not only danced on the famous Lake Zurich Dance Team but also served as co-captain of the Illinettes at U of I. She’s also worked as a UDA instructor and judge. Coach Shapiro is now in her 4th year in charge of the JV Ramblerettes.

First-year Assistant Coach Morganne Stevens helps with both JV and Varsity. She danced on this team for four years before dancing on Loyola University’s team.

Together, this coaching trio runs efficient, focused practices. “Practice how you want to perform,” writes their head coach when asked about their goals for the winter. The Ramblerettes put a special emphasis on keeping up their facials during transitions and skills. And McLean doesn’t just want “power” in their execution; she wants the girls to “breathe together to bring life to the dance movement.”

Traditions are important, even with a program that’s not much more than a decade old. Scribbled in my notepad is something about a peanut M&Ms tradition, but my writing’s too illegible to figure out the details. I bet the Ramblerette alums could fill you in if you’re curious (or hungry). They’ve been dance team members at places like Illinois, TCU, Northwestern, and of course, Loyola U in Chicago. One team alum is a professional dancer in Los Angeles. Another cheers at Notre Dame but also dances in a student-run company. And remember how Coach McLean hopes her girls use their time on the team to pave the way toward a dance degree? Ramblerette alumni have done just that at Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Western Michigan, and Syracuse.

These dancers stay close with their fellow UDA teams not far from home (Glenbrook South, Maine South, and Lake Forest are some of the teams the Ramblerettes look up to). Besides the University of Minnesota, these dancers are fans of Bearden HS in Tennessee, Millard North in Nebraska, Westmoore in Oklahoma, and California high schools Rosary and Los Alamitos.

For all the emphasis on the technical mastery a current team needs to be competitive, today (on my fall visit) the team’s in tank tops that read “Varsity Poms.” There’s a little bit of the old school mixed in to this advanced dance team, something that alludes to those days when Loyola dreamed of shifting their halftime poms team toward a trophy-earning competitive team. With steady success over the years and new heights reached every week, you could say that dream has already come true.

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The Ramblerette Seniors:

 

Malia’s a fan of ‘80s music and start dancing when she was 4 or 5. She’s graced the studio floors at Lehman School of Performing Arts in Northfield. Her favorite dance styles include pom and tap (not at the same time, obviously). Her goal as a senior: be someone that all her teammates can talk to! Malia hopes to be a good leader and set a good example for her girls inside and outside of poms.

Reilly also throws it back to the ‘80s when it comes to music she likes to listen to. But she also likes 2000s music. Her preferred dance style is jazz, and she learned a thing or two dancing at Lehman. She’s got a wise personal goal (in my opinion!), which is to get everything out of all the events she’ll be a part of this season as a Ramblerette.

Sammy’s another senior who likes her throwback music, though she’s mainly a fan of country. A dancer since she was 3, Sammy learned her moves at Driven 2 Dance in Glenview. Her personal favorite style is jazz, but when it comes to her team, she’s all about pom. She wants to her team to keep improving as the season moves forward.

Senior Molly mixes the country and alternative sounds in her headphones. She’s crafted her skills at Fisher Dance Center and also Foster Dance Studios in Evanston. A technically-minded dancer, her fave styles are modern contemporary and ballet. Goalwise, “We all want to dance in college. But since that isn’t guaranteed, right now is our last chance to give it all we’ve got.”

Margot stands out among the seniors for her unique dance profile. Her studio days started in 7th grade, AND her personal favorite style is hip hop! She picked up her modern/contemporary skills at Joel Hall Dancers in Chicago.

Kiley listens to hip hop when she’s not dancing with her team. She’s danced at Lehman in Northfield and has an affinity for the jazz style. With seven seniors leading the team, she’s got a smart goal for the season: to dance as one team, instead of as individuals.

Senior Ellie likes her EDM. Her background started at age 4 with gymnastics, and that ran through 6th grade. Her personal favorite style of dance is lyrical, but you can sort of see the effect of a competitive gymnastics mind in her goal: “Make every practice count. No regrets!”