Star Tribune
U dance team ‘elated’ after 22nd national championship and online attention
The University of Minnesota dance team is flying high — almost as high as their perfectly-coordinated aerial turns — after a national championship win and a weekend of online accolades.
As the team got ready to come home to Minneapolis on Monday afternoon, Assistant Coach Tina Tumbleson said the team was “elated and proud” after the Universal Dance Association College Nationals in Florida over the weekend.
“The amount of support we received here in Florida, back home around the globe? It’s been amazing,” Tumbleson said. “It’s been kind of hard to comprehend.”
The team competed in two dance categories, winning its 22nd national championship for its pom performance, a style that involves holding pompoms. But it was the jazz routine choreographed to Aerosmith’s “Dream On” that went viral over the weekend. Videos ricocheted around YouTube and TikTok.
A sequence in the choreography took the dancers through a long series of one-legged spins, ending with all 20 dancers flipping an aerial turn in unison.
“That’s a hard skill to get on, with 20 people on the floor,” Tumbleson said. The dancers and coaches initially planned that only a few dancers would execute the aerial, but the team decided to choreograph the routine with all the dancers making the flying turns.
“They were hungry, and they took a lot of pride in it being their routine that they choreographed,” Tumbleson said.
The team has left the national competition with a first-or second-place finish every year for the last 20 years, Tumbleson said. There’s pressure to carry on such a legacy.
“We talk a lot about how pressure is a privilege,” Tumbleson said. “It comes from the standard and the culture that … our whole spirit squad has,” she said, noting their determination to be the best whether they’re competing for a national championship, or dancing at a football or basketball game.
For a long time, Tumbleson said dance did not get the same recognition those other sports. Social media is changing that, especially moments of virality like they just experienced.
“How social media moves information, that recognition, is something we’re happy to see,” Tumbleson said. “It’s been great to have that recognition build more and more, with dancers and non-dancers alike.”
The U was among several Minnesota colleges and universities that made it to the national competition.
Minnesota State University Mankato also won its division in jazz and pom dances and took second in game-day dances. The University of Minnesota Duluth placed 2nd in jazz and 3rd in pom. St. Cloud State University, the College of St. Benedict and the University of St. Thomas teams also competed.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation closed part of a state highway Wednesday evening near Austin because of a “major hazardous materials release” in the area.
Hwy. 56 from Hayfield to Waltham, a stretch covering about five miles, was closed in both directions and drivers were directed to follow a detour to Blooming Prairie on U.S. Hwy. 218.
No information on the hazardous materials released was immediately available.
A federal judge dismissed a civil lawsuit against Minnesota state trooper Ryan Londregan in the shooting death of Ricky Cobb II during a 2023 traffic stop.
The decision is the latest development in a case that has drawn heated debate over excessive use of force by law enforcement. Criminal charges against Londregan were dismissed by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty in June, saying the prosecution didn’t have the evidence to proceed with a case.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel granted Londregan’s motion to dismiss the civil suit, arguing he acted reasonably when he opened fire as Cobb’s vehicle lurched forward with another state trooper partly inside.
Londregan’s attorney Chris Madelsaid Wednesday that it’s been a “long, grueling journey to justice. Ryan Londregan has finally arrived.”
On July 31, 2023, the two troopers pulled over Cobb, 33, on Interstate 94 in north Minneapolis for driving without taillights and later learned he was wanted for violating a felony domestic no-contact order. Cobb refused commands to exit the car.
With Seide partly inside the car while trying to unbuckle Cobb’s seatbelt, the car moved forward. Londregan then opened fire, hitting Cobb twice.
In her decision, Brasel said the troopers were mandated by state law to make an arrest given Cobb’s domestic no-contact order violation. She said it was objectively reasonable for Londregan to believe Seide was in immediate danger as the car moved forward on a busy highway, which would make his use of force reasonable.
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Donald Trump walked down the steps of the Boeing 757 that bears his name, walked across a rain-soaked tarmac and, after twice missing the handle, climbed into the passenger seat of a white garbage truck that also carried his name.
The former president, once a reality TV star known for his showmanship, wanted to draw attention to a remark made a day earlier by his successor, Democratic President Joe Biden, that suggested Trump’s supporters were garbage. Trump has used the remark as a cudgel against his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.
”How do you like my garbage truck?” Trump said, wearing an orange and yellow safety vest over his white dress shirt and red tie. ”This is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.”
Trump and other Republicans were facing pushback of their own for comments by a comedian at a weekend Trump rally who disparaged Puerto Rico as a ”floating island of garbage.” Trump then seized on a comment Biden made on a late Wednesday call that “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
The president tried to clarify the comment afterward, saying he had intended to say Trump’s demonization of Latinos was unconscionable. But it was too late.
On Thursday, after arriving in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for an evening rally, Trump climbed into the garbage truck, carrying on a brief discussion with reporters while looking out the window — similar to what he did earlier this month during a photo opportunity he staged at a Pennsylvania McDonalds.
He again tried to distance himself from comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, whose joke had set off the firestorm, but Trump did not denounce it. He also said he did not need to apologize to Puerto Ricans.
”I don’t know anything about the comedian,” Trump said. ”I don’t know who he is. I’ve never seen him. I heard he made a statement, but it was a statement that he made. He’s a comedian, what can I tell you. I know nothing about him.”
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