When Sylvia Carroll was nine-years-old, she would use anything she could find to replicate the feeling of a world globe in her arms, from huge bags of dog food to five litre bottles of water.
“You can’t make this stuff up, genuinely this is what I would do,” she tells The Irish Dance Globe with a straight face over Zoom. “I’d be holding those up and be like, ‘Mum, look at me I’m world champion!’”
Fast forward 10 years later, and Sylvia, 20, from Galway, got to hold up a globe for real, winning her first ever world title at last year’s CLRG World Championships in Belfast. The day after her win, the stunned dancer could barely find the words to tell The Irish Dance Globe during our post-competition video interview just what the long-awaited title meant to her.
“I feel like it’s going to take some time for it to process that I actually won the Worlds, like I actually did it,” she told us in a hallway at the Waterfront Hall, her infectious smile somewhere between elation and disbelief. “I feel like when you get so close so many times, and then you finally get there, it’s the best feeling ever. Literally, there’s no words.”
Nearly a year later, Sylvia – who is warm, eloquent, and always humorous in her storytelling – is still searching for the elusive words that could possibly do justice to the moment that she describes as “the best day of my life”.
“It was just the most amazing day. I get emotional just thinking about it,” she says with a sniffle. “I still don’t have words. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to put it into words. It was just a day that I’ll actually never forget, ever.”
“It’s been a messy journey. But I feel like the end goal really paid off”
A world title was a hard-fought, lifelong dream of Sylvia’s that was fulfilled against all the odds as she battled more adversity than most – including navigating the grief that followed the devastating death of her father, Brendan, when she was just 13-years-old. In the ensuing years, Sylvia had to learn to carry – and move through – the emotional weight of a loss that profoundly impacted her, her younger sister, and her mother.
This was alongside managing the emotional toll of seeing a rise and fall in her results over the years, in addition to her school studies and a demanding nursing degree which she started just six months before the 2022 Worlds. “It’s been a messy journey,” she says. “But I feel like the end goal really paid off.”
Sylvia’s unbreakable bond with Irish dancing first started when she was five-years-old when her mum, a former Irish dancer, took her to try out a class with the Hession School – home of the Gardiner Brothers, several Cairde members, and plenty of world champions – which is known for their beautiful rhythms and foot-perfect technique.
“I always wanted to go back. I just enjoyed going,” Sylvia says, citing her “emotional connection” between herself, the music and steps that made her fall in love with dancing, even if she didn’t realise it at the time.
Before long she started to work her way through the grades and attended various feiseanna, winning her first Connacht Championships when she was nine-years-old and qualifying for her first World Championships, which was held in Boston in 2013. That year she placed fifth in a “completely unexpected” result. “I always remember I came down [from the stage] and I was like, ‘I’m getting a globe next year,’” she says.
“After you lose someone, it’s like you’re asleep for a really long time and then you wake up”
Over the next couple of years, Sylvia became comfortable with results that were “up and down”. But it was 2015 that would prove to be a turning point for various reasons. At the Great Britain Championships that year, Sylvia broke into the top five and took home third place, winning the Connacht Championships again soon after in a period that she remembers – in the words of one of her teachers, Gemma Carney – for having “a spark”.
But just one week after winning the Connachts in 2015, as everything seemed to finally be starting to fall into place, Sylvia’s father passed away due to surgery complications after a cancer diagnosis. “Those whole few months were a complete blur,” she says. “I don’t even remember training for that Worlds. I don’t remember anything.”
She went to the 2016 Worlds in Glasgow with “no expectations”, instead feeling compelled to go purely for her love of Irish dancing. “That is what my dad wanted me to do, because he absolutely adored dancing, he was obsessed with it,” she says.
The emotion was palpable that day for everyone watching Sylvia, who had picked herself back up to dance her heart out while still clouded by grief. “I went and did my set, and I had the whole hall in absolute bits. I’ve never made so many people cry before in my life. That was actually a really special moment,” she says.
She would get second that day, taking home several of the hundreds and securing her best ever result – a reminder that, in life, moments of intense joy often seem to collide with unforeseen hardship and tragedy. “It was just an incredible day,” she says, visibly emotional. “I wish I remembered more from it, but I actually don’t. It’s weird, after you lose someone, it’s like you’re asleep for a really long time and then you wake up and it’s like, ‘Oh, all these things happened.’”
In the years that followed, Sylvia struggled to find a suitable coping mechanism to calm her nerves, a responsibility that used to fall with her dad who always “knew the exact things to say”. “I grew up a lot in six years,” she adds. “I had all the ups and downs in those years.” Plenty of respectable results would follow at major competitions, sometimes just outside the top five, but keeping sight of her love for dancing was proving challenging.
“Things were just falling into place without me even realising”
Encouraging herself to shift her perspective, she placed seventh at the 2019 Worlds and fifth at the 2020 All Irelands – the last major competition before Covid – both of which she recalls being “delighted” at. She was finally climbing back to where she wanted to be. Then everything came to a halt.
The Covid years would make for an uncertain future for Sylvia. She completed her Leaving Cert exams and started a nursing degree in Galway – choosing to stay closer to home rather than take her place up at Trinity College, Dublin. But when she did finally make it back to class – in the middle of her exams – she was motivated, eager, and hungry. So it’s no surprise, then, that as competitions started to return, so too did that mysterious spark.
Sylvia was the fittest she had been in her life, dancing five to six times a week despite it being “the most challenging year ever”. Struggling with the demands of her degree, she decided to defer her placement – which would have required three 12-hour nursing shifts a week – to allow herself to fully focus on dancing and give this Worlds everything she had. “Things were just falling into place without me even realising,” she says.
“You’ll lose your passion if you don’t enjoy the process”
Intuitively sensing this could be her year, Sylvia finally confronted just how badly she wanted the title in the weeks leading up to the Worlds. At class one day, her teacher, Gemma, sensed something wasn’t quite right. What exactly was wrong? “I just really want to win,” she told her.
“I’d love for you to win,” her teacher replied. “But it’s the complete wrong mindset. You need to just focus on your dancing.” It was the reality check Sylvia needed to complete the final sprint on what had felt like a marathon journey. “After I got that off my chest, I was able to concentrate on my dancing, and I think that’s why I danced as good as I did.” It was also a reminder to embrace the whole journey. “You’ll lose your passion if you don’t enjoy the process. It was a big turnaround after that.”
“I really felt my dad’s presence for my set”
On April 14, 2022, Sylvia’s dance day arrived. She was supported on day one by an eerily “good energy”. “Usually, I’m a ball of nerves, I can’t talk to anyone. I have to be by myself. But I was really bubbly, chatting away to everyone, having a great time,” she says.
That energy miraculously carried through to the next day. But she was also supported by someone special when it came to her fifth and final round. “I really felt my dad’s presence for my set,” she says. “I came down, and I just couldn’t stop crying for ages afterwards. It was just the weirdest feeling.”
It was a transcendent moment similar to what she had experienced at the 2016 Worlds in Glasgow, just a few months after her dad died. “I always remember standing on stage, about to dance my set,” she recalls. “I don’t know if there was a basketball hoop, but I had this vision of my dad sitting on the basketball hoop above my head. I’ve never forgotten it to this day, it was so weird. But I just had that same feeling on that day.”
After a long, painful wait for results, the countdown to the Ladies U20, 2022 world title finally began. As the placements crept closer and closer to the top ten, top five, top three, Sylvia desperately hoped to not hear her number called out in second. It wasn’t.
Finally – despite every hardship, setback, and personal tragedy she had faced – Sylvia was the best dancer in the world. The moment was recorded on video, which captures the Hession section of the hall suddenly erupting into rapturous screams and cheers, as Sylvia is swarmed by her ecstatic dance family.
“It’s good to fall to lower levels to keep you hungry”
Sylvia stepped onto the very top of the podium before sending her globe up into the air with a totally euphoric expression that spoke volumes to the journey it took to get there. “I watch that video frequently, and I never stop crying,” she says. “It was just the most amazing day.” To this day, Sylvia has not won a single major international title except the World Championships.
Finally the owner of a first place globe of her own – that she still brings to bed with her – Sylvia is now stepping back from competing to focus on her degree, although shares that she would jump at the chance to tour professionally in the future.
Spoken with a tinge of sadness that she won’t be stepping back onto the stage anytime soon, there’s a sense that Sylvia still has a lot more to give to Irish dancing, in whatever capacity that might be.
Now, having taken a long, hard look back at the trials and tribulations on the path to the world title – which she also reflected on in a beautifully moving speech at her school’s recent world party – is there anything Sylvia would tell her past self, to keep her motivated during those lower moments?
She takes a thoughtful, considered pause as she looks up to the ceiling. “The only words that are popping into my head right now are ‘to keep fighting,’” she says assertively.
“And do you know what? It’s actually good to not always be at the top. It’s good to fall to lower levels to keep you hungry,” she adds. “I think resilience is so important. I’ve carried resilience through my life. I’ve carried it through my college and school, and I learned that from dancing. And I’m so grateful for that, because I wouldn’t be the person I am today without it.”
“Keep fighting,” she says, words that would subconsciously echo in the mind of her younger self.
“Your day will come.”
Photography: Anna Carroll
Design: Colleen Falco
Follow Sylvia on Instagram.
