Gateway grad set to sizzle as Miami Heat dancer

By Gideon Bradshaw
Trib Live
August 19, 2015

Judy Rubino of Monroeville watched live online last year as her daughter was picked to dance for an NBA franchise in Miami.

It was a bittersweet moment for Rubino.

“It was intense and emotional. I wanted her to make it, but it means she was leaving me,” Rubino said.

Her daughter, Kristina Mazzenga, 22, a 2010 graduate of Gateway High School, earlier this month made it through the grueling tryouts for the Miami Heat’s dance team for the second year in a row.

Rubino said she was surprised her daughter made it through the cutthroat auditions.

Last year, about 400 women competed for nine spots on the team, which dances at games and other events for the basketball franchise.

“There’s a lot of beautiful girls who go down there to try out,” Rubino said.

Rubino said dancing with the team isn’t a full-time job for her daughter, whose degree is in communications and is looking for work “with communication, social media — that type of thing.”

Mazzenga, who started taking dance lessons when she was 2 or 3, performed with the Golden Triangles when she was in high school.

She later danced competitively when she attended St. Vincent College in Unity.

Before she started dancing in Miami, she danced at games for the Pittsburgh Power, a now-defunct indoor football team that played in the Consol Energy Center.

“I had previously danced in the (Arena Football League) for two years, and I wanted to challenge myself and take on a different style of dance,” Mazzenga said.

Pittsburgh doesn’t have a professional basketball team.

Living in a region that’s fiercely loyal to its hockey, baseball and football teams, Rubino said she never had followed basketball closely — let alone been a Miami fan — until her daughter made the team.

Now she follows the Heat.

“They don’t show the girls, though,” Rubino said.

“Now I watch the games because I want to see what she’s seeing.”