Written by Vicky Carrasquillo

Dirvelys Allen, or Coach D. Allen, is the dance/cheer coach at Concordia University Chicago. She has a passion for dance and guiding students to reach their full potential through their dancing. She strives to be a person of influence in their lives and feels her purpose in life is to help others. She wants to be that positive influence that not only helps her team reach success through performance but also reach success in life. Coach D. Allen credits her father, who was a pastor, to why she is a coach today. She was inspired by how he has been able to help people in life and felt that she could do the same and help people in any way she could growing up.

Dirvelys was born in Venezuela and remembers at a young age playing and creating dances with her sisters and cousins and would perform them in front of their family. When she came to Chicago at the age of seven, her mother put them in dance classes and loved it. Allen quickly developed this love for dance and has been dancing ever since. She started off as a peer mediator in 4th grade and was apart of youth groups at her local recreation center. She empathizes and connects with people and brings them together.

At Mather high school, Allen became an Assistant Coach and even captain of different teams. She enjoys being apart of a team and likes the different aspects that come along with the territory, like being apart of a family that helps each other grow and improve together. She then realized that she can teach, and enjoys working in groups and building relationships with the people she’s helping/mentoring. She likes to see and help students develop individually.

Coach D. Allen wanted to come to CUC to pursue teaching and coaching, but also to practice her faith in college as well. As a senior, she helped create and mold the dance program and has helped it grow since. She has loved to be apart of the dance team and transition to coaching those who come after her. She feels that dance is a skill and is something that you do for the rest of your life. She describes that in other sports like cheer and softball, for example, you have to severely modify it for yourself as you age, and in dance, you own it for what it is and it is the knowledge that stays with you. There is beauty in the expression, athleticism, and artistry of dance. She knew that she could always stop at any point, but truly loves what she does. She likes to help young athletes see why dance is a beauty.