What is drill team? To the majority of the United States, it’s known as a team that performs routines relating to military drill and can be armed or unarmed. To those in Texas, it’s known as the girls in sparkly uniforms and white boots who perform dance routines during halftime at football games. It may seem like something that only last during your four years of high school, but every former and current drill team girl understands that there are many struggles that carry on after high school. I spent all four of my high school years on one of these lovely drill teams and loved every second of it (even all of the constant struggles).
1. The neck bruises.
Almost every Saturday after Friday night games, you get constant weird looks from strangers. What are these looks for? The bruises under your chin. We have these from the strings holding our hats on. “The less your hat moves and the more it hurts, the better,” is something one of my former drill team captains would always tell the team. Luckily, the bruise would disappear by that Sunday.
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2. Always having to buy new tights before a competition.
You’d think that having two pairs of dance tights during football season would be enough. Spoiler alert: it’s not. One of those is your practice pair, and the other is your performance pair. By the time football season is over, your performance pair has at least two holes and multiple runs in them. The practice pair? Barely hanging on. So by the time competition season rolls around, you have to run to the store to buy yet another two pairs.
3. Being immune to the smell of hairspray.
Hairspray to a drill team girl is like a helmet to a football player. Without it, our hair would not stay in place under our hats, and our makeup would smear. We even use it to prevent runs or holes in our tights. Hairspray is the holy grail to drill teams everywhere. Getting it in our mouth? Shoot, that doesn’t even phase us anymore. Our phone screens stayed covered in films of hairspray.
4. The. Splits.
Drill teams are mainly known for one thing. Their splits. With every kick routine comes the jump splits. “Jump, kick, jump, splits,” is something that’s ingrained into every drill team member’s brain for all four years and beyond. The vigorous amounts of stretching (and in my case a pulled hamstring) are what lead to the perfect jump splits. After four years of them, we don’t even wince at watching it be done anymore.
5. Lipstick checks.
The main part of a drill team's signature look is the bright red lipstick. Coming along with that are the lipstick checks at the beginning of every quarter during the game and especially before going down to prepare for halftime. This consists of the captain looking around and telling each girl if she must reapply her lipstick one last time before performing. You must also smile to make sure that none of it has escaped onto your teeth.
6. Cheek cramps from smiling.
Being in a drill team consists of constant smiles even when you’re just sitting in the stands, and the band is not playing. So the cramps that everyone gets from smiling or laughing too long? Yeah, we’re used to that, and they don’t even phase us anymore. If you’re waiting too long for a picture to be taken and someone’s not complaining about holding their smile, then they’re probably a dancer. We’ve even mastered the art of talking without dropping our smiles. Trust me; it takes a lot of practice.
While there are a lot of struggles from being on a drill team, there’s also so many great things about it! You get the chance to be at every single football game even the away ones or it could lead to college scholarships. There are even drill teams at some colleges that you could audition for to continue drill team (Kilgore Rangerettes, Tyler Junior College Apache Belles, and several others). If a drill team girl says her dance season never ends, trust her, because it doesn’t. You start practicing at the end of June for summer camp, start football season, go straight into competition season after that, and then go on to Spring Show. It’s extremely time-consuming, but worth every second! It’s been three years since I’ve been on a drill team, and I still miss it to this day. It was some of the best times I had in high school!
