YUMA, Ariz. - "Over the last six, seven years it's just been constant roll over," Arizona Western College Athletic Director Jerry Smith Said. "A constant revolving door of new person, new person, new person. I bet you. In the last five years we've been through at least ten people trying to lead the program and they all leave real quick."

Smith is referring to the Arizona Western College athletics dance program. It's struggled to find its footing since longtime head coach Tiffany Minnick left. The dance and cheer programs thrived under Minnick, as did the football team under the leadership of her husband Tom. Tiffany was named was named the interim spirit coach at Arizona Western in 2009. Under Minnick's guidance, which spanned 11 years, the roster nearly tripled in size. 

"She did such a good job," Smith said. "Tiffany was head coach of both the cheer and dance teams and led the student hall for student athletes. She had a lot of success and made a real impact with our students."

Following the 2018 season, Arizona Western College made the difficult decision to discontinue the football program, citing unsustainable financial costs, challenges in scheduling and league uncertainty. Head football coach Tom Minnick landed on his feet the following year in Garden City, Kansas. His wife Tiffany also left for Garden City and was named the Head Spirit Squad Coach for Garden City Community College. The dance program has never been the same since.

"The dance and cheer programs are important to our athletic programs, they really add a lot to our teams and our fans," Smith said. "We can get it going but we have to start from the ground up. Right now, it's not a full-time position. Before we can ask for more money, they're [coaches] gonna have to prove that they can put a program together with appropriate number of students and appropriate number of full-time students."

In the fall of 2025, Arizona Western went back to the family that garnered so much success on campus by hiring Morgan Minnick, the daughter of Tom and Tiffany, to lead the Matador dance team in a part-time role. 

"I saw that the job was open and I was like, they're starting the dance team up again, or trying to because I know it kind of fell apart last year," Morgan Minnick said. "I was excited to help bring back the dance team and I have some experience with starting new teams, especially at the high school level. I thought that coming back home to Yuma and applying for this job would be a great opportunity."

Yuma is home for Morgan. She's a 2021 graduate of Gila Ridge High School and currently attending Arizona State University. Morgan brings over 16 years of dance experience to Arizona Western including serving as President of the Performing Dance Club and helping establish Gila Ridge High School's first-ever Pom team. While at ASU, she performed with the Dancing Devils dance club and continued to advance her training through conventions, earning scholarships and recently tried out for the Arizona Cardinals Cheerleaders, making it all the way to the final cuts.

"I would say it's definitely a learning experience this year," Minnick said. "For anyone with starting a new job it can be difficult at first. Starting the team from nothing, we didn't really have a lot to go off of since we didn't really have a dance team last year. There's not really a lot of knowledge down here in Yuma for the dance culture."

It's been a slow process in building the dance program from the ground up. 

"I started through social media, Instagram is one of the main social media platforms that everyone uses," Minnick said. "I have a lot of connections with studios and high schools. I know the dance teachers and reached out to them and all the studio owners in town. I just said I'm recruiting for the Arizona Western dance team, could you spread the word?" 

Word spread and students showed up to tryouts in August.

"I think I had like eight or 10 show up and I accepted all of them," Minnick said. "It's hard because sometimes life gets in the way. Some have to work or can't make practice or events for other reasons. It's pretty much all on their own time. We're slowly growing and at the end of 2025 I had a roster of 12 and now recently added one more."

The work Minnick and the dance program is putting in, is getting noticed. 

"I feel she's done an amazing job," Assistant Sports Director and Sports Information Director Scott Gross added. "Morgan has the dance team everywhere. They performed this fall during halftime at soccer and volleyball matches, they perform at basketball games, attended community events, help in the concession stand and do whatever they can to raise money for their program. Morgan really has the program involved and our teams and especially our fans are noticing."

Minnick shares a lot of praise for her team members.

"They are incredible," Minnick said. "All of my dancers have been on their high school's dance teams. We have team members from San Luis, Cibola, Gila Ridge and Yuma High. They're from all over so I'm glad that I got to bring them together and they love each other."

While the dance team is in its infancy stage under Minnick, the program is starting to crawl with the plan for the future to eventually start competing in national competitions. 

"I will always focus on student engagement and get out into the community," Minnick said. "Eventually, my vision is to see the program perform and compete in competitions whether it's UDA, USA, and NDA. I just want to see them grow just like all the other NJCAA and NCAA schools. I want to get them to that level where they're professional and everyone's looking at them and now want to go to our school because we are a really good dance school. I'm just trying to take it step-by-step and grow it, take them to camps and have them learn more about what it means to be on a college dance team."

The program is slowly growing and so far, taking the right steps moving forward with the leadership from a very familiar source.

"Show me that you can do it," Smith said. "Then more money will start coming in for scholarships and whatever else the program needs. So that's where we are and what the administration wants to see. We want the students to be just like all the other student athletes. We want them competing and going forward with degrees."

You can catch Morgan Minnick and the dance team performing this Saturday during halftime at Arizona Western's men's basketball game. Then again during the women's basketball game on January 17th.