The LU Dance team poses with Assistant Coach Jenny Glenn (left) and Head Coach Christine Ewald (right) at Liberty Arena, where the team held its first Showcase this past Saturday.
LU Dance team welcomes new assistant coach, primed for this weekend’s College Classic in Orlando
4/10/2025 1:44:00 PM | Dance
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After holding a showcase with Liberty's Indoor Drumline and Cheerleading squads this past Saturday at Liberty Arena, the team traveled to Orlando this week to compete nationally for the first time.
This past September, the LU dance team, in its third season representing Liberty University's Club Sports program, welcomed Jenny Glenn as a new assistant coach to serve alongside Head Coach Christine Ewald, who started the previous fall semester.
"Coaching has been really cool, and an amazing opportunity," she said.
Like Ewald, who was a professional cheerleader for the Dallas Cowboys and Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 1990s and early 2000s, Glenn has many years of dance experience and spent time as an NFL cheerleader with the Philadelphia Eagles.
After developing an early love for gymnastics, Glenn joined All Star Cheerleading and went to a performing arts high school for dance, which helped her develop her technique. She attended the University of Delaware, where she earned a degree in health and behavioral sciences with a minor in dance. While she was in college, she competed on a club dance group called the Delaware Dance Fever for two years.
During her senior year of college, Glenn participated on a service trip, on which her faith and relationship with the Lord blossomed.
Jenny Glenn (in red) serves as Assistant Coach under Head Coach Christine Ewald.
"The moment my life changed when it came to my faith was when I was able to worship through dance," she said. "Dance taught me how to use my art to serve Him."
Glenn tried out and was selected to the Philadelphia Eagles' cheerleading team and was blessed to cheer with them at the Super Bowl in 2018, when she fell in love with the outreach opportunities with the team and being able to share Christ through them.
"They flew us to Mexico, and it was pretty cool because we got to serve in the village so I got to serve and help," she said, noting one year the team donated shoes for an orphanage and she contributed a couple pairs of her own shoes out of her suitcase.
Since then, Glenn has gone on many short-term mission trips to Belize, Puerto Rico, Spain, South Africa, Cameroon, and South Korea, where she has been able to spread God's love and her passion for dance.
"All those experiences morphed into one mountaintop experience where I realized my identity really is in Jesus," Glenn said. "I got to dance and sing and act and do things that I love, and God was in it, and it was amazing. We were able to go, and I got to lead in a dance workshop overseas."
As an assistant coach with LU Dance, Glenn has continued to use her passion for ministry mixed along with her role in discipling the team and sharing her love and experience in dance.
"I'm truly so proud of these girls," she said. "They are incredible. They are well-spoken. They are hardworking, and I've seen them (excel) even in their people skills along with their dance talent."
The LU Dance Team traveled to Orlando, Fla., on Wednesday to enter its first ever national dance team competition on Saturday and Sunday in Orlando, Fla. The College Classic, sponsored by Dance Team Union (DTU), includes more than 100 dance teams from all over the country competing, and Liberty is excited to make its national competition debut.
"We're making literal LU (Dance) history by traveling to go to compete for the first time," Ewald said, noting last year the team submitted a pom performance video filmed for a virtual competition. "The girls are so excited. They're ecstatic."
After performing throughout the football and men's and women's basketball seasons during the fall and winter months, the LU Dance team held its first competition showcase this past Saturday afternoon at the Liberty Arena.
That event, which also featured performances by the D-Trex Dance Crew and Divine Call Dance as well as collaboration from Liberty's Indoor Drumline and Cheerleading squad, served as a final dress rehearsal for LU Dance to practice both its pom and lyrical jazz competition routines.
"We wanted to work through any kinks or problems that may arise, and to have an audience that we can perform in front of before we go and compete before judges," Ewald said. "It was an amazing experience, and we're so grateful to have been a part of 'Thunder on the Mountain'."
The DTU event is a tier below the Universal Dance Association (UDA) College Nationals, held in January, as well as the National Dance Alliance (NDA) College Nationals, which are also being held this weekend in Daytona Beach, Fla.
"Lord willing … the desire is to be at the NDA or UDA level," Ewald said. "This College Classic competition is gaining a lot of traction. This is good for us, to travel to Florida and share the love of Jesus with the dance world. We've been praying for this opportunity and trusting that the Lord will provide divine appointments."
The team will be traveling to Melbourne, Fla., to practice in Dance Mania, the same 10,000 square-foot studio where Ewald's daughters grew up dancing.
"God has been opening lots of great doors of opportunity," Ewald said. "That is an amazing all-source studio that is well known and thriving in the dance world."
She noted that LU Dance has been contacted by other universities competing at the College Classic and they plan to get together for a time of praise and worship as well as prayer before the competition begins.
"We are definitely prayed up to hopefully get opportunities to share the love of Jesus with as many people as the Lord may lead us to," Ewald said. "This team has just come so far and has really grown technically in their dance skills. We are just really excited to represent Jesus and Liberty University for the first time at this competition."
"On Saturday, the girls are going to be competing in Jazz, which is a big division," Ewald added. "The have to compete in prelims to try to make it to semifinals, and Lord willing, if we make it to finals, that will be on Sunday. They will be competing in Division I Pom as well, which will have a preliminary and a final round."
Besides Ewald and Glenn, Club Sports Sport Performance staff member Allison Salesi and Associate Athletic Director for Sports Medicine Angie Witt — who met Ewald through her church and introduced her to the program — are accompanying the LU Dance team to Florida. Witt also serves as Club Sports Senior Women's Administrator.
By Amory Doyle/Student Writer and Ted Allen/Staff Writer; Video by Andrew Musser/Club Sports Video & Media Coordinator
