Joey Dance finished his fifth season with the program in 2025-26.
Dance has been a critical part of Jason Borrelli’s staff for each season of the program’s resurgence, helping the Eagles go from one dual win in 2021-22 to four straight seasons of at least eight wins. In 2025-26, he helped send three wrestlers to the NCAA Tournament, the most in program history since 2020: graduate senior Maximilian Leete (133), redshirt junior Caleb Campos (184), and redshirt sophomore Emmanuel Ulrich (HWT).
A former All-American at 125 pounds himself, Dance has made his most significant impact on the team’s lightweight wrestlers. He guided three lightweights from the staff’s first full recruiting to stellar careers at AU: Leete, Raymond Lopez, and Jack Maida, who all wrestled their best at 133 pounds. Under Dance’s tutelage, Leete recorded 76 wins, won a conference title, and qualified for the NCAA Championships twice. Maida ended his career with 64 wins to his name and a trip to NCAAs in 2023, while Lopez had 63 wins and finished tied for sixth all-time in career pins in AU’s record book with 24.
Dance also helped JJ Peace to a breakout sophomore season in 2025-26. The 125-pounder was second on the team in wins with a 26-12 record, starting in almost every dual and placing in four open tournaments throughout the season. Peace finished the regular season ranked 32nd in the RPI poll.
Dance came to AU after three years as an assistant coach at Davidson. While in North Carolina, he assisted in the hire of the program's first-ever full-time second assistant coach. The 2019 Wildcats tied for the most points ever scored by a Davidson team at the conference championships, and eight wrestlers achieved SOCON All-Academic recognition. Dance coached three of the top-three conference finishers, three academic All-SOCON team members, three who made the All-SOCON Freshman Team and NCWA Scholar All-American Kyle Gorant.
As a two-time All-American at Virginia Tech, Dance posted a career mark of 114-20 and lost just a single ACC bout in four seasons. He was a three-time ACC Champion and qualified for the NCAA Championships all four years of his career. Dance was both a fourth and a fifth-place finisher at the NCAA Championships, and is one of only two 125-pound All-Americans for Virginia Tech. In 2014, he was the ACC Freshman of the year as well as the Midlands Champion, and in 2016 he was the Cliff Keen Champion.
Dance is ranked fourth at VT with a career winning percentage of 85.0, and fifth in single-season dual wins with 18. His 114 career wins rank seventh, as does his NCAA winning percentage of 63.6.
Dance graduated from Virginia Tech in 2017 and went on to compete at the Chicago Regional Training Center (CRTC) in national and international competitions. He also helped instruct fellow CRTC athletes by demonstrating technique and prepping them for competition. Dance started Push Wrestling to help organize and market clinics for local elementary, middle and high school-aged kids.
Dance and his wife, Sarah Jean-Duffau Dance, reside in Falls Church, Va. The pair were married in June, 2020.
