Mizzou’s best-kept secret, its Twerk Team, has gained a substantial amount of notoriety this week after a record seventh place finish at the Middle America Collegiate Twerking Classic. Competing against fourteen teams from neighboring states, the Tiger twerkers proved not just to Missouri, but Illinois, Arkansas and other less relevant nearby states (Kansas) that there is hope for the sport of organized twerking.
“My, my, my, the team really showed up and showed out this weekend,” said team captain, David Yang, “I could not be anymore proud of us, we really worked hard for our seventh place finish. We are so blessed.”
The team practices three days a week for an hour, sometimes even an hour and a half. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights you can find them working up a sweat in one of the empty rooms of the Arts and Sciences building. What used to be considered just a good work out or, more popularly, fodder for some dank-ass YouTube videos is now a NCAA sponsored sport, providing endless opportunities for aspiring rump shakers.
Yang and his girlfriend, Kaitlin Wong spearheaded the team, the idea coming to them as a sort of epiphany moment for the young couple.
“We were just typing up some HTML for our previous project, an apl.de.ap fansite, when Hands On Your Knees came on, and I could not help but shake my moneymaker,” said Wong, “David was clearly mesmerized by the booty for a brief moment, but once he snapped out of it, there was only one thing on his mind: bringing the art of twerking to the Mizzou campus.”
It wasn’t hard to do, the two spread the word using social media and setting up a booth at the freshman activity fair.
“Real talk, though,” said Yang, “Twerk Team is not an activity. I would go so far as saying it’s not even a sport, but a lifestyle. Or maybe even a religion. I won’t say it’s a cult. But it might be.”
With the rapid growth and average success of the team, there has been speculation that the squad has become a bit overzealous, especially in light of the recent recruiting violation accusations directed at the Tiger Twerkers.
“Just because I took number one twerk prospect Daniel Ling disc golfing and slammed a six pack of tropical mango wine coolers with him in the HyVee parking lot does not mean I was trying to coerce him into signing with us,” said Yang, “He’s a friend of a friend of a friend, and I was just trying to show him a good time, one awesome ass shaker to another.”
The NCAA decided to drop the charges on the Tigers, but are keeping a very close eye on them as they prepare their squad for next season, in which they plan on growing the team even more and perhaps cracking the top five at the regional level.
