The fear was first incited by an email: an 18 May 2018 message from the San Antonio Spurs staff to members of the Spurs Silver Dancers squad, less than a month after the team’s season ended with a first-round playoff loss to the Golden State Warriors, asking them to attend a meeting that same day about a new ‘hype team’ they were introducing. Immediately, the dancers’ group texts were a flurry of nervous speculations. “They were so casual about [the meeting request]” recalled Carrie Black* (not her real name; other members of last year’s Silver Dancers who spoke to the Guardian and requested anonymity are marked with an *). “Usually everything with the Spurs was, ‘Drop everything, and you show up. You’ll be there.’”
Still, they told themselves, everything was probably fine.
But within hours, the dancers’ anxieties proved founded. Six of them arrived nervously to the AT&T Center to find two familiar faces from the team’s human resources department: Jaimi Martinez and Daniel Radwanski. “They were people that we worked with often, people we respected,” Black said. Quickly, Martinez and Radwanski got to the sterile business of telling the women that the Spurs Silver Dancers had been summarily disbanded. Their revered coach Katie Gibbons had been fired.
The Silver Dancers, they were informed, would be replaced by a new “family co-ed hype team”. (Team Energy, the Spurs’ popular co-ed hip hop squad had also been cut loose.) The blindsided women pressed for answers. What was not family-friendly about the Spurs Silver Dancers? As Black recalled it, Martinez and Radwanski offered only powerless shrugs, and a vague explanation that “season-ticket holders no longer wanted dancers”. From the onset, the responses read suspiciously to Black. It seemed to her that this decision had come from someone higher up. “[Martinez and Radwanski] weren’t particularly thrilled with the situation,” she recalled. “But they had to do what they had to do. We weren’t going to shoot the messenger.” By sundown, the Spurs had become the only NBA team without a dance squad.
Word spread frantically through the network of Spurs Silver Dancers alumni: hundreds of women who still identify as Silver Dancers and take tremendous pride in the athletic careers they had with the NBA’s most decorated team of the last two decades. Dozens of these women had performed at a special 25th anniversary half-time show in April of the previous year where they were met with standing ovations and were subsequently asked by the Spurs to return for a reunion show once every five years. Now, their work, their sacrifice, a legacy some 26 years in the making, was gone. Doubts about the reasons given by the Spurs for disbanding the team were widespread.
Ashley Worrell* danced for the Silver Dancers from 2002-04 and has also danced for the Dallas Mavericks and the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. She reported that as a current season-ticket holder, she was never contacted by the team to get her input on whether the team should have dancers. “I was livid,” Worrell, recalled of hearing the news. “I almost cursed when I called my ticket representative, which I never do.”
Worrell took particular issue with the insinuation that there was something unwholesome about the Silver Dancers. During her own time on the team, she engaged in extensive community service on behalf the Spurs. (This is common practice among dance teams across professional sports, and a certain number of unpaid hours are generally required of dancers.) “We’d go to these schools. A lot of them are latch-key kids. That’s the best part of their year. We’d read to them, spend time with them. Use any other excuse except that they are not family-friendly. I cannot accept that.”
The notion that ticket holders no longer wanted the Silver Dancers also ran counter to dancers’ own experiences. “We had a really strong fan base. Everywhere I went, I was recognized as a Silver Dancer. I couldn’t even go into the grocery store without makeup on,” recalled Grace Lee*, a member of the 2017-18 team. When news of the Silver Dancers’ elimination broke, a fan started an online petition to bring them back that garnered more than 10,000 signatures.
“I don’t believe the fans don’t want us,” said Black, “I think there’s a bigger picture that they’re not telling us.”
Four days after the Spurs Silver Dancers were disbanded, news broke that the Houston Texans – a few hours east on Interstate 10 – were being sued by three of their dancers for unpaid wages and harassment. Three weeks later, a wage discrimination lawsuit on behalf of a dancer from the gold standard of cheering – the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders – was announced. These lawsuits came directly on the heels of several other well-publicized cases against pro-sports teams this year: both the New Orleans Saints and the Miami Dolphins recently faced discrimination lawsuits. The dirty secret of professional sports teams’ poor treatment of their dancers has become more open – and impossible to ignore.
“We were all a little shocked at the timing of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleader case,” said Lee. “We were always in our group chat talking about things like the Texans case.” In other cities, dancers also saw fearful correlations between the recent spate of bad press and the eradication of the Silver Dancers. “Girls reach out from different NBA and NFL teams, asking: ‘Do you think they’ll get rid of us?’”
“I think they are wanting to get ahead of any potential negative publicity,” said Meghan Collins* (not her real name) , who danced for the team from 2014-17. “I think the Spurs are worried that we’re all going to start complaining the way these other NFL teams are. If that’s the case, it’s messed up that they got rid of us without even trying to fix the problem first …Making sure they’re not even in a position to be sued. While still keeping your fans entertained and happy. That’s how you stay out of the headlines. I think they took the lazy way out.”
All of the dancers interviewed for this story expressed deep gratitude for having ever had the opportunity to dance professionally. “We believed not only in the Spurs but in my coach’s idea of choreography. We just wanted to show our talent on the court. We did it because we loved it,” Lee said.
Every dancer interviewed also expressed that the current minimum wage salary – $7.25 per hour – paid by the Spurs to the most recent Silver dancers was not tantamount to the time, talent and devotion required to acquire and maintain a spot on a team. “It just sucks,” said Mel Rodriguez Martinez*, who danced for the team from 1994-2000. “If you work at Walmart as an assistant manager, you get more than minimum wage.”
“It was never a part-time job. I always felt like it was a full-time job,” said Lee. While she was on the Silver Dancers, she ran every day to maintain her endurance for six-hour game days. These long stretches left no time to sit, and included meet-and-greets with fans, bouncing onto the court for “hot time-outs,” and, of course, flawless high-impact choreography. Lee recalled spending the entire day before Tuesday and Thursday rehearsals working steps, which were expected to be perfected before rehearsal started. Beyond her athletic duties to the team, she worked regular promotional and charity appearances.
“The right response (to the recent controversies) would have been: ‘We’ve been doing this wrong. It’s time to pay these girls what they’re worth,’” Worrell said. “‘It’s time. They will stop suing you if you pay them what they’re worth.’”
Several dancers speculated that current cheerleaders rarely speak out against their low wages publicly because, as Collins described it: “People are afraid of being blacklisted. Being the first to revolt.”
“They always say if you aren’t willing to do it, some other girl is,” Worrell recalled, of her experience on all three of her former teams. “It’s that fear. Right away. ‘I can be replaced.’”
“You’re not disposable,” said Rosalyn Jones, who founded the Spurs Silver Dancers in 1991, and coached them for eight years. “Not everyone has your work ethic to keep you in shape. Not everyone has grown up taking dance classes and cheer classes. Not everyone can do that. If you’re able to do that, you should be compensated for it.”
“If everybody did form a union,” Collins started, contemplatively, “Professional sports isn’t going to survive without dance teams, and when they bring them back, they will be unionized.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Jones replied to Collins. “I would like to see (a dancer’s union) happen.”
Jones initially started the Silver Dancers after being rebuffed by the Spurs when she proposed that they take on a squad. Determined to bring professional dance to San Antonio, she choreographed her own group of dancers and booked a one-off half-time performance at a Spurs game. The show was such a success that Jones was called into the Spurs’ sports and entertainment office shortly after and offered a job as the dance coach.
The team that Jones established would lay the creative framework for what continued to be the Spurs Silver Dancers’ ethos for the next two and a half decades: meticulous choreography that played with the edges of the conservative San Antonio market. “We pushed the envelope a little and stayed within the Spurs parameters,” Jones said. “There was such anticipation from the crowd. You could feel it. People would get quiet. They would sit down, like: ‘What are these girls going to do next? It’s not predictable. It’s entertainment.’”
“They need a dance team,” Jones said. “They just don’t know it yet. Come about February or January when the fans are bored, there’s going to be nothing at that game. They’re going to be going: ‘What do we do?’”
“We are the reason people didn’t get out of their seats and leave or stop coming to games,” said Lee, recalling one of the routines she was most proud of: a sequence the team did to the Pussycat Dolls’ When I Grow Up at what would be their final ever performance. It is a gripping jazz routine, stunning in its precision and rapid fire changes.
“You could see all the players staring at us, like, ‘This is insane,’” Lee recalled. Nobody was listening to the coaches. They were watching our performance. And the fans’ reaction afterward. I could not believe it. We literally left it all on the floor that night.”
Prior to disbanding the Silver Dancers, it seemed clear that the Spurs’ upper management recognized their importance and the direct role they played in representing the franchise. According to Jones, Spurs management had direct say in the selection of uniforms – which were conservative in comparison to other NBA markets. Most of the dancers interviewed also reported that Spurs executives attended all pre-game practices, and would regularly give last-minute performance notes.
“I think the owner dictates the whole entertainment side. What they want to see, what they think,” said Worrell, noting that when she danced for the Mavericks, “Mark (Cuban) was very involved. He would go to appearances with us. They’re completely involved in what happens on game day.”
Given the long history of input from management in the team’s creative direction, many of the women interviewed wondered why, if the Spurs legitimately took issue with any aspect of the dancers, they did not address their concerns as they usually did before doing away with the team. “With any team, if there was an an issue, we were made aware of it,” said Leandra Davidson, who danced for the Spurs from 2007-08, and had previously danced for the Houston Rockets and the NFL’s Texans. “I can’t imagine the organization letting them know that there was a problem that was not addressed.”
“Is it that their tops are too low? Put a panel in it. Give them a new top,” said Jones.
If the corporate office believes, as their vice president Tammy Turner wrote in its press release, that the new hype team “will further enhance the game-night experience for Spurs fans at the AT&T Center”, that sentiment has not been echoed in their actions. After multiple requests for comment from the Guardian for this story in person, by email and by phone, the Spurs’ press office responded only that they were “going to pass”.
Whether or not the Spurs choose to publicly acknowledge it, the Silver Dancers provided significant branding and monetary benefit to the team. Lee recalled working at an event that was also attended by head coach Gregg Poppovich, who “said something kidding around, ‘Are you paying these girls? Because they’re doing an amazing job. They’re always looking so good.’”
Not least of the squad’s contributions was its Junior Silver Dancers clinics, which were conceived of by Jones, whose model of operating in multiple cities throughout the region has since been adopted throughout the entire NBA. At these clinics, girls from toddlers to teens would be taught routines by current Silver Dancers, and perform at games where, says Jones, “hundreds of extra tickets were being sold to these girls, their grandparents. We sold t-shirts, shorts, hair ribbons.”
What was also being sold to these young girls was the dream of someday joining the Spurs franchise. “Once (the Silver Dancers) came about, that’s what you wanted to do. If you were serious about dancing, that was your goal,” said Nicole Cortes, who danced with the team from 1999 to 2001, and participated as a child in the Junior Silver Dancers. Cortes recently started her own independent female dance team, the San Antonio Spirit.
“Silver Dancers, NFL, NBA: that’s the epitome after everything you’ve done,” said Jones, “You’ve reached it. That’s the glass ceiling.”
The elimination of the Silver Dancers is the culmination of what has amounted to a decimation of opportunities for female athletes in the region. In 2017, the San Antonio’s NHL team Rampage eliminated their dancers. Last year, the city’s WNBA team, the Stars, which employed both players and dancers, relocated to Las Vegas.
“There’s nothing else,” Davidson said, of the Spurs position in the heart of in San Antonio. “There’s no football. The Spurs is it.”
They’ve lost all-NBA swingman Kawhi Leonard. Tony Parker is gone, too. Over the course of one summer, San Antonio has become a starless city. The people there won’t have help finding a reason to cheer.
“We were the fun,” said Lee, “We were the Kawhi.”
This article was amended on 27 January 2020 to remove some personal information.