‘Who is this girl?’
‘Why is she so young?’
‘And, why do I need to listen to her?’

Those were just some of the questions junior Erin Manske remembers facing on the first day of dance practice.

Manske, a math major at UW-Eau Claire, was hired last year to jumpstart the Eleva-Strum High School dance team. Not only was she given the responsibility of starting a team from scratch, she was faced with the difficult task of coaching a high school team at the age of 19.

“Wow, she looks like she’s our age,” then high school freshman Anna Johnson recalled thinking to herself that first day of practice.

Now, Manske fights back tears when she realizes just how far the team had to come since that day. She still has trouble believing they were within four points of making it to state this season, just one year later.

Growing up
Manske danced for a few years when she was growing up in a suburb of Madison, but said she was always involved in other sports as well. At the age of seven, she had already dropped dance completely and said she enjoyed playing volleyball and soccer more.

By the time high school hit, dance still wasn’t on her radar. During her freshman year she played on the volleyball team, which took place during the same season as dance.

After the conclusion of her freshman year, Manske re-evaluated and decided to go out for the dance team at her high school. Joining the dance team in her hometown of Sun Prairie was not something people just did for fun. It was a highly ranked program that practiced at least five-six days a week from June until March. Manske quickly realized she made the right decision going back to dance, and was named the captain of the team by her senior year.

Her eyes still light up as she describes the fond memories from then.

“It was the best thing I could have imagined, we got to go all over the country and dance,” Manske said. “It was awesome, I learned a lot about leadership and we got to open for Petey Pablo. It was really cool.”

By the time she hit college, she thought she was done with the sport again. Little did she know, the biggest impact dance would have on her life was still to come.

Forming the team
Eleva-Strum High School Athletic Director Rich Roginski said the school had a dance team in the past, but they had difficulty filling the position with instructors.

Eventually, he said he decided to put up an ad on the UW-Eau Claire Job Board “in hopes of getting an energetic college girl that had some real good background in dancing.”

Roginski said he narrowed it down to two very qualified candidates, one of whom was Manske. Ultimately, he said she was able to convince him that she was the right person for
the job.

“She appeared very sincere and enthusiastic and excited about coaching dance.” Roginski said. “I just could tell by the way she carried herself and her sincerity that she would carry that enthusiasm over into our program.”

Although Erin was just a year older than the senior class at the high school, Roginski said her age was never really a concern to him.

“I thought she displayed a tremendous amount of maturity at the interview and sometimes you get a gut feeling about someone,” Roginski said. “I felt that she appeared to have the firmness and would be able to require things from the kids, there was something about her that I didn’t fear her age would be a problem.”

After being hired, Manske said all the further instruction she received was ‘OK, go.’

She said her first task was having a meeting with the girls who were interested during their homeroom.

“From there I needed to form a budget, form their practice schedule, what seasons they would be in, when they’d be performing and if they’d be competing,” Manske said.

The toughest task for her initially was fundraising, which was much more difficult than she was used to in her hometown. She said her graduating class at Sun Prairie was comparable to the population of the entire town of Eleva.

With a smaller community to support the team, she said they had to work as hard as possible for funding. The team did a series of bake sales, held a Christmas decoration sale in the winter, and held a youth clinic for girls in the area to dance at basketball games with them.

Manske said she was also in charge of the budget in high school when she was the team captain, where she controlled $38,000.

After all their fundraising, she said the team ended up with about $1,500, but added the team did what they had to do to make it work.

“Uniforming a girl is usually about $500 a person, so we made a bunch of our uniforms and got hand-me-downs from other schools,” Manske said. “It all worked out really well.”

Coaching the team
Although she was the captain of her high school team, Manske said she had no actual coaching experience prior to getting the job.

“I had no idea what I was getting into,” Manske said. “I can’t believe they trusted me to do it.”

Prior to joining the team, Johnson said she had a couple of years of dancing experience from when she was younger, but it was nothing compared to Manske’s standards. She said the team was “absolutely terrible,” when they started.

Manske said that things were very tough for her at first, both from a coaching standpoint, and emotionally.

“I expected to walk into my team from high school and I left in tears. I was like ‘I’m not going back,’” Manske said.

Manske knew that working the girls hard was the only way they could get to the level she believed they could reach. Although the team didn’t compete at all the first year, they improved enough that she brought in a friend to help coach going into the second year.

“I had to bring in someone who was more technical that could challenge the girls more,” Manske said.

As the team became more advanced and worked for more funding, it was eventually decided that they would compete this year for the first time.

By the end of this season, she had them competing in two categories — pom and hip-hop — with a chance of making it to State. She said that made her extremely proud, because many schools only compete in one category.

The top-five teams in each category make it to State, and the team narrowly missed reaching that accomplishment, placing sixth in both. Still, Manske said she felt like a parent and was incredibly proud of all the girls on the team.

Roginski was quick to point out that although the dancers have seen a lot of success very quickly, it didn’t come easy.

“The kids know that they are going to be required to work really hard, but the end product is a great performance,” Roginski said. “She’s really taken a real average program and turned it into an elite program.”

The next step
Manske said she hopes to stay on board as coach of the team for the rest of college, which will be two more years.

She acknowledged she only gets paid enough to cover about a month’s expenses, and said she definitely isn’t in it for the money. Even though she isn’t quite sure what she was going to do with her degree after college, she’s confident dance will remain a part of her life for good.

Roginski said he doesn’t even want to start thinking about having to replace Manske. He added that the standards she has set for the team will be pretty hard to uphold.

“I think she’s taken a program and built it into a high octane program,” he said. “I think the thing I noticed at the state tournament when the dance teams performed from the D-1 and D-2 schools, I feel that our girls could compete against any of those teams.”

Johnson said she has really appreciated her time with Manske, and that she has definitely made an impact on her life and future.

“I feel like she is someone we can look up to as role model,” Johnson said. “I feel like even after I graduate she’s someone I can still be friends with.”