Racine Native Joins Energee! Dancers to Cheer on the Bucks
By Luke Feuerherm
JournalTimes.com
Only hours before the BMO Harris Bradley Center would fill with thousands, first-year cheerleader and Racine native Andrea Gonzales sat courtside with her coach.
Together, the two women took a few calming breaths to help Gonzales forget about the pressure of perfecting each step in what would be her first performance as a Milwaukee Bucks’ Energee dancer and focus on what she has always loved to do — entertain a crowd.
Growing up an only child in her family’s Thurston Avenue home, Gonzales kept mostly to herself or to her coloring books.
“But when I was called to show someone something,” she said. “I was always up to do it.”
And since those living-room performances, dance has remained a part of the 22-year-old’s life and has taken her across the country, from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York to Disney World in Florida.
As a teenager at Park High School, Gonzales was even selected to perform at halftime of a Buck’s game at the Bradley Center — an opportunity she could only assume at the time would be her last.
It was Energee dancers who selected the then 16-year-old out of a group of teenagers at that annual Bucks Dance Competition, an event Gonzales worked as a member of the team this year.
“It’s come full circle for me now because when I was their age, I was watching Energee dancers,” she said. “And when I would go to that competition, I would be like, ‘I look like some of them and I move like some of them. Maybe I could do that one day.’ ”
Since taking the court back then as a high school student, Gonzales has grown and is currently a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, majoring in communications and teaching dance in her spare time.
And before signing up for the exhaustive Energee tryout process, Gonzales said she considered whether or not she wanted to do so and continue her dance career.
“I wasn’t ready to hang up my dance shoes,” Gonzales said. “But I was pretty close to it. I was content with just coaching and teaching. But I decided to give it one last shot to see if I had it in me.”
And of the 86 dancers who auditioned for first-year coach Tricia Crawford, only 20 were selected for the team.
“Each girl brings something special, something different that maybe the other girls don’t have, which is part of the reason they get selected,” Crawford said, explaining that Gonzales’ passion for dance was one of the qualities that helped the Racine native stand out.
And as the two sat courtside before the dancer’s first game, Crawford worked with Gonzales to focus that passion not on the exactness of each step but instead on entertaining the hordes of Bucks fans that would soon file into the Bradley Center seats behind them.
And for Gonzales, nerves and excitement continued to swirl as she came through the tunnel minutes before game time and stood for her first national anthem.
“Then when you go to the sidelines,” Gonzales said, “you’re looking at the crowd from a different angle and they’re so close to you. And when they are that close, you just think about making sure they are entertained.”
Crawford said that night at the Bradley Center was one of the team’s best performances up until that point in the season and a strong start to Gonzales’ Energee career. “You could tell she sank right into her comfort zone,” she said.
