New DWTS Competitor Gabby Windey Reflects on Her Bachelorette Experience as Rachel Recchia Sends Love

Another Bachelorette heads to the ballroom!

Dancing with the Stars announced Thursday that Bachelorette Gabby Windey will compete in the upcoming 31st season with Val Chmerkovskiy. Windey, 31, told PEOPLE during a post-cast-reveal virtual roundtable that she thinks DWTS will be "different in a good way" from her experience on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.

"I feel like I'm lucky enough to have momentum," Windey said of coming on the dancing competition series off of her run as Bachelorette. "I think I grew so much the last two seasons that now I get to really challenge myself in a different way. I think there is a lot of actual vulnerability that comes with this position, because nobody knows what you're doing. Plus, you have to perform live. So it was good kind of building blocks for this."

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Windey's co-leading lady on The Bachelorette Rachel Recchia, who'd previously advocated for Windey to join DWTS, showed support for the ICU nurse's casting on Instagram, writing on her Story Thursday, "I am absolutely bursting with happiness!!!"

Windey told reporters that she hadn't yet reached out to former Bachelorettes and Dancing with the Stars winners Hannah Brown and Kaitlyn Bristowe, but added, "I definitely should. I need whatever tips I can!"

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Although Windey worked for five years as a Denver Broncos cheerleader, she felt that experience "just doesn't translate."

"Don't think that I have a leg up," she warned fans, "because I'm here to tell you I don't."

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The Illinois native has a fellow reality star on the DWTS season 31 cast: Real Housewives of New Jersey's Teresa Giudice. "I definitely have been trying to be next to her and on her good side and just near her," Windey said of fangirling over the Bravo star. "But she's not really biting."

Windey and 26-year-old Recchia's season finale airs Tuesday, and although Windey didn't want to give away the ending, she teased how she feels now.

"I can say I am happy," she said. "Bachelor's really emotional. It was challenging in so many ways that you have to really get to know yourself, make yourself vulnerable, try and make the right decision that's best for you at the time. So I feel like now, going into something that's more physical, a little more fun and a challenge in a different way, I think will be a good shift of gears a little bit to kind of balance out the high emotion of my last experience. Overall, I don't regret anything and I would do it all over again — I'm just kidding!"

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Dancing with the Stars season 31 premieres Sept. 19 at 8 p.m. ET on Disney+.