The Unfinished Story of My Little Brother Owen (Who Fell Into an International Transfer Grey Area)

I want to tell this story so that hopefully it doesn’t happen to anyone else.

Owen, my brother... decided to study abroad in Ireland last year and transferred to Holly & Kavanagh to train and compete.

He found out he wasn’t allowed to dance at the Oireachtas in the USA because his teachers live in Ireland and so they aren’t allowed to register with IDTANA.

He then found out he wasn’t allowed to dance at the Oireachtas in Leinster because he still was registered with an American college (although he was living in Dublin at the time).

This was heartbreaking to me and my family… we were genuinely confused about why he wouldn’t be given an opportunity to compete as a hardworking dancer who followed all the rules put before him.

He just danced and won the All Ireland’s.

The All Ireland’s has international world qualifying status so we were hopeful that this would allow him to compete at World’s given that he was unable to dance at any Oireachtas... due to no fault of his own.

Unfortunately we then also found out that he would not be allowed to use the All Ireland’s as a sole qualifier.

From my perspective if anyone knew this story they would see that Owen didn’t do anything wrong and should be given the opportunity to compete at World’s.

So I went ahead and created this petition to raise awareness around this loophole. It seems likely there will be dancers on the future who fall into the same category (e.g. dance for an Irish school but registered with a US college) so I want to make sure all people in this category are covered by a rule that allows them to qualify for World’s.

Please sign this petition so we can raise awareness about this issue. And please share and tell your friends!