ST. CLOUD -- The St. Cloud State University Dance Team took home two big wins from last weekend's national competition.

The group of talented dancers traveled to Orlando, Florida last Friday for the annual three-day, College Cheerleading and Dance Team National Championship.

The team took home 3rd place in the Dance Open - Jazz category. Morgan Hanenberger is one of the team's coaches. She says the whole team really connected with the routine.

"The routine is called, 'elastic heart' at the beginning of the season we had the idea that it was about something that was holding us back and then over the last couple of months we started connecting to it as, we are holding each other up, how a team pushes each other, supports each other and how when you have that cohesiveness all the goals you can accomplish."

The 3rd place winning dance was choreographed by Karl Mundt and Rachel Doran with Innovate Dance.

Hanenberger says the team's goal was to get in the top five.

"We're normally called in 6th or 7th place, that's normally where we are with jazz. Normally we're not top five and our name still wasn't called so it was kind of shocking in a good way. [When] we were called 3rd place that was huge...Our original goal was to be in top five and the fact that we made top 3 is amazing."

Minnesota State Mankato took 4th place, while the University of Minnesota Duluth came in 5th and the College of St. Benedict took 6th place, all in jazz.

SCSU also placed in the Dance Open - Pom category with a 4th place win. The College of St. Benedict took 3rd place while Minnesota State Mankato ranked 5th.

The St. Cloud State University Dance Team has a total of 16 dancers.

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