Katelyn Cummins is hoping to lift the Glitterball tonight. But even if she doesn’t, the journey has been incredible for the Rose of Tralee.
Speaking to VIP Magazine ahead of the final, she admits: “This time, one year ago, I was sitting my last set of exams in college, and I had applied to be the Laois Rose, but nobody knew. I kept it a secret because I was like, what if I don’t win? My life has done a complete 360 to now.
“How is this real? How did a 21-year-old, a 20-year-old, back when I won in Tralee, how did she become someone on Dancing with the Stars? How did she become someone from probably one of the smallest villages in Ireland, we have a pub, we have a church, we have a community hall, to go from that, to living up in Dublin, to spending every day with all these incredible people who have so much experience in this environment.”
She tells us that she has “grown so much as a person” and that she feels “so much more mature in the last couple of months”.
She “100 per cent” thinks that her confidence has grown over the course of the show.
“I definitely do think that Leonardo was a massive part of that. He has pushed my boundaries and my patience every single week. No matter what dance we had, there was a new character, a new personality that had to be kind of unlocked every week in order to make the dance look as it did. That was my biggest challenge: believing in myself to step outside of my comfort zone.
“I kept saying to him, ‘That’s so embarrassing, come on now, people are going to laugh at me if I do that.’ And he just had to be like, ‘Katelyn, this is dancing, this is a show, it’s a performance, it’s not real, it’s not real life.’
“He made me realise that nobody really cares. And it took me a long time to realise that over the last few weeks, nobody really cares anymore. Everyone is so focused about themselves.”
She goes on to say: “He was a massive part of me learning that and having more confidence in myself to just fully let go. And to let other people in, I’ve let him in an awful lot in the last few weeks, especially with my hearing and my disability and how I grew up with it. I never expected that out of this experience at all, to be able to let someone that I barely knew, but I know quite well now, in.”
Of course, she has become a role model for so many young girls watching the Dancing with the Stars.
“I don’t feel like I’m doing anything particularly special. I kind of just chat about how my experience has gone the last couple of months, the last two and a half years and just share my own story. If people think that that’s inspirational, then I don’t really know what to say. My parents just raised me to always believe in myself and that I don’t need to follow in anyone else’s footsteps,” she says.
So what’s next for Katelyn? Well after her Rose of Tralee year, she will be heading back to her electrician apprenticeship. But beyond that?
“I joked a bit about working on set with Dancing with the Stars next year, do the lighting and be a technician behind the scenes. And I’d love to do that.”
The Dancing with the Stars Grand Finale airs on Sunday 15 March at 6:30pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.
