Ilona Maher bounced back during Dancing With the Stars’ Dedication Night — but she’s still setting her sights higher.
“I was hoping for higher scores, but I also just wanted to improve from last week and get back on the horse and feel better about it,” Maher, 28, exclusively told Us Weekly after the Tuesday, October 15, episode of the ABC ballroom competition. “So, if I felt better about it and got a seven or a six, I would have been like, ‘Oh, that, for me, was good.’”
Her partner, Alan Bersten, agreed. “These are our highest scores, so we’ll take them,” he told Us. “But to me, the scores didn’t matter because truly the first time, when we finished, it was like, the first time I was like, ‘Oh, my God. We crushed that.’ I was so present in it. Usually, I black out and kind of just hope for the best. And this time I felt so connected to Ilona, and it was just beautiful. So, I’m really happy. Scores don’t matter, but we’re proud we got eights.”
The dancing duo scored 32 out of 40 points for their rumba to “My Way” by Yseult. Maher dedicated her performance to her U.S. Women’s National Rugby Sevens teammates, with whom she took home a bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics earlier this year.
“Everyone asks me about how, ‘Oh, how did you get to be so confident? How did you get to be this way? What you do for women is so amazing.’ And I just answer that the reason is because of them,” Maher gushed. “And when you’re around a group of women like that who make you feel so empowered, so beautiful, it translates and it affects you and it changes other people.”
Maher told Us she was “so happy” to see her teammates cheering her on in the audience on Tuesday, as it marked their first reunion since the Paris Games. “Just to see them in this setting, and I know they’re proud of me and they’re supporting me,” she shared. “And yeah, they cried because they just love me, and I think we love each other.”
Bersten, for his part, said he wanted to dedicate their latest dance to his parents. “I’m a mama’s boy. I love my mom. I love my dad,” he said. “I’m very grateful for my family.”
The pair’s score placed them in a five-way tie with competitors Brooks Nader and Gleb Savchenko, Chandler Kinney and Brandon Armstrong, Jenn Tran and Sasha Farber and Phaedra Parks and Val Chmerkovskiy. Nader, 28, and Savchenko, 41, were sent home.
Maher’s Dedication Night performance was a big improvement from last week’s Hair Metal Night, during which she got teary-eyed after messing up the pair’s jive to “Cum On Feel the Noize” by Quiet Riot. The dance earned them a score of 26 points.
Maher told Us she’s “not shocked” that her time on DWTS has been emotional. “I’ve always been a person who wears my emotions on my sleeve. If I’m feeling a certain way, I’ll show it,” she explained. “And my teammates even said, I guess, my best friend was like, ‘Well, the next day when you were done crying, we just said, ‘Oh, that’s Lo.’’ Like, ‘Oh, that’s just how Lo is.’ Sometimes she has that, and she gets right back on the horse.”
She continued: “It’s just always how I’ve been. I cry in rugby. I cry in one of the toughest sports in the world. And it doesn’t take away from me as, like, how powerful I am or who I am as a person.”
Maher and Bersten, 30, will return to the ballroom for Disney Night on Tuesday, October 22.
Dancing With the Stars airs simultaneously on ABC and Disney+ Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET. You can stream episodes on Disney+ the next day.
With reporting by Carly Konsker
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