Hart High School grad Marie DeRuiter to appear in ‘Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team’

By Megan Hart
The Muskegon Chronicle
10/17/2011

The start of a Hart High School graduate’s quest to become one of “America’s sweethearts” will air Thursday night.

Marie DeRuiter will appear in the sixth season of Country Music Television’s reality show “Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team.” She was one of 27 young women to make the cheerleader training camp for the first time. The show will premier on CMT at 10 p.m. Thursday.

“It’s a little bit nerve-wracking at first to have cameras around you all the time,” she said. “The TV crew’s there so much they become your friends.”

DeRuiter said she started dancing when she was four, and moved to Los Angeles to study dance after graduating from Hart High School in 2005.

She returned to West Michigan a year later to study at Grand Valley State University, with the encouragement of her parents, Richard and Laura DeRuiter of Hart, she said. She graduated in 2010 with a degree in marketing and sales.

“I did ballet, jazz, tap, contemporary, hip hop,” she said.

After graduation, she successfully tried out for the Grand Rapids Rampage and West Michigan Thunderhawks indoor football teams’ cheer squads.

“I didn’t even hold a pompom until I tried out for the Rampage,” she said. “They’re called cheerleaders, but they’re more of a dance team.”

In May, she decided to kick it to the next level by flying to Dallas to try out for the Cowboys’ cheer team.

“When you think of professional cheerleaders you think of the Cowboys,” she said. “I wanted to be part of the best team in America.”

The Cowboys’ cheerleaders’ work with the USO and the Salvation Army also appealed to her, she said.

About 500 women participated in the first weekend of auditions, DeRuiter said. The first task was to freestyle dance, she said, and 122 women were chosen to return for the next round of auditions, according to CMT.

The dancers learned a routine and participated in a kickline for the second round of auditions, which narrowed the field to 69 candidates. They then had to compete with 18 returning cheerleaders for 45 spots in the cheerleader training camp, DeRuiter said, in a third weekend which included an interview segment.

“They want you to be intelligent as well as good dancers,” she said.

They also had to choreograph their own dance routines, complete with costumes and music. DeRuiter said her routine theme was “being a strong woman,” and included Beyonce Knowles “Run the World” and a jazz song.

“The song says that you can clean the house and still be glamorous and be independent,” she said.

DeRuiter made the cut for the 12-week training camp. Most days, the dancers were practicing from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., she said.

“They cut girls through the whole entire process, so any day could be your last day in camp,” she said. “I met so many great girls. You’re all going through this stressful process together so you end up really connecting.”

She made it almost to the end, she said, but a hamstring injury sidelined her on the last night of the camp. She was practicing a kickline with ankle weights so she could kick higher when it was time to perform – not a good idea for healthy hamstrings, she said.

DeRuiter went to physical therapy and tried acupuncture and electric stimulation treatments while still in training camp, but it wasn’t enough.

“I was trying to get it back during training camp, but that just wasn’t realistic,” she said.

For now, she’s back in West Michigan, coaching the dance team at Aquinas College. She said she’s considering pursuing a master’s degree in communications, and taking another shot at being a Cowboy dancer.

“I’m hoping to heal up and try again next May,” she said. “Performing, for me, is what really makes me happy, being able to make people smile.”