“We were very proud of how we did. In the end, our big team goal was that it doesn’t matter how we place, it doesn’t matter what the judges think of it, we are doing this for us, we are doing it for our school and most importantly we are doing it for the survivors,” team captain Nicole Murray said. “That’s all our team really cared about ... shining light on them coming forward and them being survivors.” 

Last February, in the aftermath of the Larry Nassar scandal, Murray came up with the idea to dedicate the dance to survivors of sexual assault. She shared this idea with her team, and they liked the concept.

“I feel like, it was something we all were experiencing together on campus,” team member Madison Wagberg said. “Whether it was hearing it on the news or hearing people talk about it in public, it was shining a bad light on our university and we wanted to do something that would say, ‘Just because this happened, we don’t stand for this.’”

Murray reached out to her former dance teacher, Lisa Fruchey, to choreograph the dance. Fruchey had never worked with MSU’s team before.

“They were really passionate about telling this story about the survivors of this sexual assault,” Fruchey said. She said she was honored to contribute to the number.

Murray and Wagberg said their favorite part of the dance was when the team stood together, arms linked at the front of the stage, at a transition in the song “Warrior” by Demi Lovato. 

“That’s the point in the music where it turns, and it’s talking about how she’s strong now and she’s stronger than she’s ever been,” Wagberg said. “We all were together holding hands and we thought that was really powerful.” 

Fruchey described how adding emotion like this to the dance came easily with the teams’ collective dedication to performing a dance with such a strong message.

“I probably have never choreographed a piece where all of my dancers and myself were on the same page, with the exact same story, feeling the same way,” Fruchey said. “There’s frustration in it, there’s hurt — the movement tries to imitate those different emotions, it tries to take the audience through that story.”

On top of perfecting the choreography before leaving for the national competition, Murray also reached out to the Go Teal campaign. Amanda McCafferty, one of the creators of the campaign, gave the dancers teal ribbons, “No More” bracelets and prevention cards which they distributed to family, friends and other teams while in Orlando.

The team also spread awareness through their social media platforms, noting on Instagram that their dance is “dedicated to the survivors of sexual violence and the bravery that they have displayed.”

Murray said the team worked on the exact message the team wanted to send with their performance.

“We wanted it to not be focused on the negative of what actions happened,” Murray said, “and more about the light of (the survivors) — and how they overcame together.”