Cavalier Girl: Elbridge Woman Makes Cleveland NBA Team’s Dance Team

By David Wilcox
AuburnPub.com

Emily Schwarting was sitting with her parents in their Elbridge home one Sunday morning this summer, waiting for a phone call.

Schwarting had graduated from Mercyhurst University in May. But when that phone call came, her father said, she was a teenage girl all over again.

“She just couldn’t sit still,” said her father, David. “All excited and shaking.”

The call came from the Cleveland Cavaliers, who told Schwarting that she had been selected to join the NBA team’s Cavalier Girls dance squad. Out of 130 women who took part in the weeklong audition, she was one of 20 who made the cut.

“I put my whole heart into wanting to be on this team,” Schwarting said in a Thursday phone interview. “It’s one of the best phone calls I’ve ever received.”

A lifetime of dance led Schwarting to the high-profile spot. She began her craft at the Center of Ballet and Dance Arts in Syracuse when she was 5, under the instruction of Deborah Boughton. Every day after school, Schwarting said, she’d be in the car by 5 p.m. for a few hours of instruction in pointe, ballet, tap and other styles. She saw herself following in the graceful footsteps of her cousin, Broadway performer Bradley Benjamin, of Skaneateles.

Going to school at Jordan-Elbridge, Schwarting would also cheerlead in middle school and play lacrosse. By the time she was in 10th grade, though, dance was all Emily had time for, David said.

“That was her love and her passion,” he said. “If she had a dance class Friday night, she wouldn’t go to the football game or the school dance.”

As Schwarting transitioned from Jordan-Elbridge to Mercyhurst in 2011, that passion withstood a pair of setbacks. The first was her Syracuse dance school’s closure in the spring of her senior year. Instead of staging their grand finale in an auditorium, Schwarting and her fellow dancers gave a hastily scheduled one at the school, David said.

The second setback came at Mercyhurst, where Schwarting landed badly after a jump, spraining her ACL and MCL and tearing her medial meniscus. She wasn’t sure she’d ever dance again, she said.

“I looked at the people around me and saw how many of them have fought through injury,” she said. “So I trained hard to get back to where I was, and it made me a better, stronger, smarter dancer.”

After Schwarting came back, she made a contact through the Mercyhurst dance program that’d set her Cavalier Girls gig in motion: Holly Anderson, coach of the dance team for NBA Development League team the Erie BayHawks. Until 2011, the team was affiliated with the Cavaliers.

Schwarting danced with the team from 2013 to 2015, adding commercial styles like hip-hop and jazz to her repertoire of concert styles. When Schwarting graduated from Mercyhurst, Anderson made her former dancer aware of the opportunity with the 2015 NBA Finalists.

“She was the one who pushed me to go further in that style,” Schwarting said. “And I had kept going west. So I thought, why not try Cleveland, Ohio?”

So far, since making the squad, Schwarting has performed with the Cavaliers for a few preseason games ahead of their Oct. 29 home opener. (The Cavalier Girls don’t travel with the team.)

Ever committed to getting better, Schwarting splits her time between the Cavalier Girls and the Dancing Wheels Company & School, which teaches the art to people with disabilities. She balances that continued practice of concert dance with prioritizing entertainment on the Quicken Loans Arena court.

“The big thing is having a smile on your face,” she said.

Schwarting hasn’t had the opportunity to meet Cavaliers star and the team’s all-time leading scorer, LeBron James, as the NBA has a no-fraternization policy, she said. However, she’s already received a warm welcome from the team’s fans at preseason games and other public appearances, she said.

“It makes you feel like you’re a mini-superstar,” she said.

“I had a father at a game the other day and he came up to me and said, ‘I’m only here because my daughter wants to watch you perform. Thanks for giving her that inspiration,'” she continued. “It takes you a step back to realize that it’s not just about basketball.”