There’s an organization on campus that takes a ragtag group of students with limited experience and turns them into a team of champions. The University’s admissions process is brutal, its athletic teams recruit vigorously and its artists are talented, but most have been honing their craft for years. It’s only the University of Michigan Ballroom Dance Team that turns complete novices into world-class competitors.

On a Saturday afternoon in the CCRB, you’re likely to stumble across the usual sights and sounds: people running on treadmills, lifting weights, sweating it out and feeling the burn on various complicated exercise contraptions. In the CCRB’s mirror room, however, you'll find something unique, something that initially resembles an awkward middle school dance but upon further observation is clearly much more.

It’s here that the Michigan Ballroom Dance Team hosts its weekly newcomer lessons. The room is lined with people shedding their winter boots for dance shoes, while a few brave couples casually dance to the loud music blaring through the studio. Some watch their arms or hips in the large mirror, repeating a move over and over until they’re satisfied with how it looks, while others are simply killing time before class begins.

An older couple dressed in all black takes the center of the room and begins class. The room is almost instantly divided by gender as about 30 women line one side, and 30 men take the other. The coaches start on the Rumba, slowly breaking it down, explaining and demonstrating the quick Latin dance.

Each dancer watches intently, moving his or her feet along with the instructors’, trying to match each step. That reminiscence of prepubescent dances completely dissipates as the British man in the center yells, “Men, grab a woman!” The crowd follows his commands — “quick, quick, slow, slow” — and the room of 60 men and women becomes a room of 30 couples moving in unison, surprisingly seamless for a beginner class.

In this class, the team was working on Rumba and Foxtrot, but there are many more dances the team members must learn. Ballroom competitions are divided into two categories, Latin and Standard, and each category consists of five dances. Rumba, Jive, Paso Doble, Samba and Cha Cha make up the Latin dances while Standard consists of Waltz, Foxtrot, Quickstep, Tango and Viennese Waltz. Not only do the dancers have to be proficient in each and every one of these dances, they have to be able to perform them unchoreographed, on the fly.

Though most team members have never partner-danced before joining the team, the Michigan Ballroom Team is one of the best in the country, having won seven national championships — the International Team Match in 2001, 2002, 2007 and 2008; and the American Team Match in 2001, 2003 and 2004.

Many of the members, like Engineering freshman Ryan Pollard, had never danced before joining and got involved on a whim.

“I had four other friends who decided to join at the same time, so that was pretty much all (the persuasion) I needed,” Pollard said.

Business junior Daniel Lian joined in a similar fashion. He and his partner, LSA junior Sofia Yokosawa, have been dancing together for almost three years now. They found each other using the dance team’s partner search, an event the team hosts to help newcomers find someone they’re compatible with for ballroom competitions.

“It’s kind of like speed dating, but it’s speed dancing,” Lian explained.