Brenchley's Blog: Drill Team Happenings

This post is what has been happening with my drill team, the Elleves at Maple Mountain High School.

Football season ended near the end of October. We performed our military routine for the last home football game. We borrowed military costumes from Lone Peak High School's drill team. Ours were not finished, and I didn't want to wear new costumes outside on the field anyway. So, I contacted Lone Peak's coach because their school colors are the same as Maple Mountain's. She said that she had some old military costumes that we could borrow. She uses them for football performances as well, so she didn't care that we would be wearing them outside.

Here is a picture of the team in the military costumes:

Maple Mountain played Spanish Fork that night, so we had a "Friendship Tea" with the Spanish Fork Drill Team. Seven girls on my team had been on the Spanish Fork Drill Team last year. We had a good time. Here is a picture of the two teams together:

We finished up working concessions at the BYU football games. Yay! I am always so glad to be finished with them! It is a great fundraiser--but a big time commitment. We always have fun while working though. Here are a few pictures from one of the games:

The drill team sponsored the first ever "Sadie Hawkins" dance at MMHS on Friday, November 13th. The theme was just "The Original Sadie Hawkins". A lot of the students did not know the history of Sadie Hawkins or why we have it. So, we decided to use that as our theme.

We also put on an assembly for the school. We asked all of the performing groups at our school to participate. The dance company, cheerleaders, jazz band, chamber singers, MMHS Dance Crew, and the Malelleves all performed. The Elleves also performed, of course, and we also showed a few video clips of the skits that we did to tell the story of Sadie Hawkins.

It was hard for me, or I think it was just because I had never been in charge of an assembly before. The day of the assembly was very stressful. Minutes before the assembly was to start, the dvd player in the auditorium would not play our dvd of the skits! Great, now what do we do? Well, they hooked up a laptop and played the dvd from that and it worked. All of this happened as students were coming into the auditorium for the assembly.

The assembly ended up being a great success and all of the performing groups did an excellent job. The drill team ended the assembly with an awesome performance of their military routine. It rocked! They hit everything right on!

After school we decorated for the dance. Here are some pictures from decorating:

Just before Thanksgiving Break, we performed at the Boys Basketball "Maroon/Gold Game". Performing at basketball games is fun and it helps us get ready for our competition season. We performed our kick routine, "Be Our Guest".

It is a great routine which uses the "Be Our Guest" music from "Beauty and the Beast." For our costumes, we wanted to look like French maids. So, when I met with my costumer, we looked at several fabric samples and decided to go with gold, but a more yellow gold, and black. Once the costumes were all made and the team was trying them on, I thought, they kinda look like bees. It was not my intention at all! But, we thought the costumes were so cute, we kept them as is, and so, no, we are not bees!

Here is the team in the kick costumes:

We had a busy week this past week, November 30 - December 5th. We had a girls basketball game to perform at on Monday. A boys and girls basketball game to perform at on Tuesday. I had parent teacher conferences on Wednesday night. Thursday, we performed at a boys basketball game. We performed our dance routine. This year's dance routine is entitled, "You'll Find a Way". The music and the choreography are very different. Not your typical "drill team" routine. My team is very technically talented, so we decided to "push the envelope" and try something different. For our costumes, I wanted something "different", but showy. Our dance also has a "Bollywood" feel to it. So, I researched bollywood costumes on the internet and the officers and I came up with an idea. We have had to change it a bit here and there and it has been a bit stressful. The original fabric we wanted became unavailable, but we found another one. They look good, despite all the stress they have caused me. But, hopefully they will help our team "stand out" against all of the other drill teams.

Here is the team doing our "circle talk/prayer" before the performance:

The Elleves--in their dance costume:

To finish off our busy week, we left after school on Friday, December 4th to stay over night in Salt Lake City. We were competing in our first drill team competition the next day at Davis High School.

We stayed at the Hilton City Center in downtown Salt Lake City. We checked into our rooms and then walked to the Olive Garden restaurant which is right on the corner. We had a great time at dinner. My team are such fun girls! They are also very kind and considerate. My table of girls were in a different location, just around the corner from the rest of the team. Well, while we were eating, the manager of the restaurant came over to me and said, are you the leader of these girls? I said yes, thinking, oh no, what have they done wrong. And then the manager continued to tell me that my team was a great bunch of girls. They were very kind and considerate and understanding. I guess their server had not brought them their salad and bread sticks before their main dishes. So, when they brought their main dishes, the girls were very understanding and didn't cause any trouble. So, they got free dessert! Way to go Elleves!

After dinner, we walked over to Temple Square and looked at the Christmas lights. It was fun and we had a great time together as a team.

Here is the team at Temple Square:

The Salt Lake Temple--not the best picture in the world:

Team picture, in front of the giant Christmas tree in the lobby of the Hilton:

We got up bright, well dark, and early the next morning and left the hotel at 5:30 a. m. We needed to check in at the competition at 6 a.m.

Our first competition as a team went very well! It was so much fun to be the "new team". Everyone was asking, "Where is Maple Mountain"? And no one expected a "new" team to look as good as we did!

After they performed their military routine and I was walking in front of the crowd, I heard people commenting, "Wow, that was good--where are they from?" I guess no one expects a new school to have as many girls on the team as we do and to be as good as we are.

Well, we ended up getting 3rd place in our hip hop routine. Which we had to compete against the 5A schools. There were 10 teams total in the hip hop category. The 1st and 2nd place teams were both 5A. Then, we got 3rd place in kick, 4th place in military, and 4th place in dance. We were so excited. Bountiful, the 4A state champs from last year were there and they are going to be tough to beat--they look amazing again this year. Their kick routine is on toe shoes!

Here is the team with our trophies: