Oxford High School dance team, also known as the Chargerettes, welcomed a new head coach to their staff for the 2024-2025 season. Erin Boeni or Coach “B”, is a self-contained special education teacher at Oxford Middle School, as well as head coach of the OHS dance team.
While this is Boeni’s first year coaching she has years of experience dancing. She has danced at every level, from toddler dance classes all the way to professional teams.
“I have been dancing since I was three years old,” Boeni said. “I danced in a studio until I went to college where I was on the dance team at Temple University and then I became a professional dancer for the Jacksonville Jaguars.”
After moving to Oxford in 2018, Boeni stopped dancing and found herself missing it. She took the opportunity to be the dance coach at Oxford High School so that she could be around the sport and inspire other young people to dance.
“I want these girls to love dance again, so when it became an opportunity to teach young girls the thing that I love I knew it was exactly what I needed to do,” Boeni said.
Boeni wants to make sure her team feels like a community for her dancers, which means building strong healthy relationships.
“When you are a coach you are part of the team so I think the must important part about being a coach is having that relationship with your fellow teammates,” Boeni said.
Kaitlyn McConnell, one captain of the OHS dance team, believes that Coach Boeni is the perfect example of what a coach should be.
“She is like our aunt,” McConnell said. “She is fun and she cares about us, but she is also very professional and we can get stuff done at the end of the day.”
Boeni’s husband is a strength and conditioning coach at The University of Mississippi so the team has been running laps and working out in the weight room once a week.
“We have been conditioning much more than we used to so I think Coach ‘B’ will improve the overall strength of the team physically as well as mentally,” McConnell said.
Boeni’s main goal for the season is not only to win, but to make sure the girls love being a part of the dance team. She hopes to create a closely bonded team that can have fun no matter the outcome of a competition.
“We may not win everything, but its a guarantee that we will do it together and have fun no matter what and that is my main goal for the upcoming season,” Boeni said.
McConnell is thankful that the new head coach makes it a priority to have good relationships with the team because having a strong relationship with the coach makes being a captain much easier.
“The captains act as a median between the coaches and the dancers so having a good relationship with the coaches makes it a lot easier for us to agree,” McConnell said. “It also makes it a lot easier to solve issues if we don’t agree with one another.”
With the team being much larger than normal this year going from 18 to 28 members. McConnell and her teammates are excited to see how Coach “B” will help them grow as a team.
“I think she will be really good for the team,” McConnell said. “I can not wait to see how she will transform us as dancers, teammates and people in general.”
