Dan doesn’t go because she doesn’t want to go. Even if they came to her and offered her a spot, conditional or guaranteed, she would turn it down.

Dan got into Exy because it was a means to an end–her aunt had no motivation to get out of a dead-end life and Dan was the breadwinner for their family for the majority of her high school years. There was no money for anything fun, and definitely no money for college. Dan’s grades were weak because she was always tired and had no real time to study around her job.

Sports were her solution–she figured if she could pick up a sport and get really good at it, she could aim for college with a sports scholarship. She grew up in a smallish town surrounded by small towns, so she figured it’d be easy to stand out.

The only reason Dan stays with Exy at all after graduation is because of Wymack. He inspires her at their first meeting, and she knows as soon as he’s left that she wants to be him one day. She wants to be a coach, she wants to give kids the chance he gave her, she wants to take over the Foxes when Wymack is ready to retire, etc etc. Her stage sisters at Snowy Starlets think it’s kind of cute but puzzling that she’d pass up the riches & fame of a professional career, but Dan doesn’t care enough about Exy to devote herself like that.

She’s good at it not because she loves it but because she chooses to work her ass off and give it her best day after day, because she is tired of people thinking she is a failure and more tired of people telling her she isn’t going to make something of herself. If Dan can prove those people wrong, then there is nothing else she needs or wants.