The 2025 Jasper Dancers team with their first and third place plaques.
BRYLEE WATKINS / COURTESY
Mary Haley, Marketing Chair & Asst. Features Editor
The first weekend of February saw the Jasper Dancers take home third place in their jazz routine and first place in hip-hop, as well as a choreographer’s award. The team competed in Long Island, where they premiered their 2025 dances – the same numbers that will be performed at the Metropolitan Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) in March and the National Dance Alliance (NDA) Collegiate finals in April.
Brooklyn Schriver, a junior communication major and social media coordinator for the Jasper Dancers, reflected on the team’s early-season accomplishments.
“We usually just compete at Nationals in April,” Schriver said. “But this year, our coach decided to sign us up for regionals too. It helps us get the nerves out and get feedback from judges before Nationals.”
Their first regional competition, the Walt Whitman Invitational on Long Island, featured teams across all levels—from middle school to college. The Jasper Dancers performed in both the jazz and hip-hop categories, competing against five other college teams.
Annie Rasetina, another junior on the dance team and the team’s apparel coordinator, explained that the addition of regional competitions wasn’t the only change the team made this season.
“For jazz, we hired a choreographer this year, which was different,” Rasetina said. “He came in for a day or two to teach us the dance, and then our coaches refined and perfected it.”
For hip-hop, the team learned their routine just a month before competing — showcasing their ability to adapt quickly and deliver high-level performances.
Assistant coach Brylee Watkins ‘24, alumna of both MU and the team, credits the dancers’ dedication for their success.
“The fact that they performed at such a high level with just a month of preparation is so exciting,” Watkins wrote in an email to The Quadrangle.
Watkins, in her first year as assistant coach, shared how the team’s approach to competition has evolved.
“In recent years, we haven’t been able to compete at regional competitions, which is something Head Coach Madeline Donohue and I felt put us at a disadvantage,” Watkins wrote. “We knew we wanted to prioritize early feedback to set the team up for success at Nationals.”
The feedback from the judges at regionals will be integral to how the dancers prepare, adjust and clean their routines moving forward.
“I definitely feel more prepared going into nationals,” Schriver said. “Getting feedback and performance experience is helping us see what works and what we can improve.”
As Watkins inches closer to coaching at her first nationals competition, she explained to The Quadrangle what she feels is the biggest hurdle in team’s training as they start the countdown to their biggest competition of the year.
“Dance is a really hard sport to excel in because so much comes down to subjectivity,” Watkins wrote. “But this team continuously finds a fight and a fire to keep getting better.”
With their eyes set on nationals, the Jasper Dancers are not only building on last season’s third-place hip-hop finish at NDA but also aiming to showcase their growth and hard work.
The Jasper Dancers will perform next on Feb. 16 at their UDA regionals competition.