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Putting the "team" in drill team

© Kathryn Morton

As I browse through various drill team message boards, I see a lot of posts from new officers and directors asking for ideas for team-building activities. At the beginning of every year, there are going to be new members, and one of the biggest challenges is bringing the team together. There's not a huge difference, but there are subtleties between a team that is a *team* in every sense of the word as opposed to just a group of women who dance together.

So this weekend I searched the Internet for a few a sites that included team-building activities for your team to try out. Many of the pages were from educational sites, since I know from experience (my parents are teachers) that "getting to know you" activities are important in the classroom.

One of those sites is Teacher Talk--Great Ideas "Icebreakers". There are activities here that are good for learning names. The icebreakers each have short descriptions.

Another place I found was at Teachnet.com in an article by Nicole Stockdale.

In my search, I also found several professional team-building companies--usually companies that were advertising the services they sell. Since your drill team probably doesn't want to have to bring in a professional team-building company, you might want to just visit the Teamworks: The Virtual Team Assistant. The site was created to help promote communication within groups that have engineering and practical arts and sciences goals. I'd say drill team qualifies as a practical art. :)

The Teamworks site includes nine topics: Team Building, Project Management, Team Problem-Solving, Team Conflict, Team Feedback, Team Leadership, Participation in Discussion, Oral and Written Presentations and Teaching with Teams.

As I mentioned earlier, I got the idea for this article from reading various message boards related to dance/drill teams. Some of these message board members had their own ideas to share. They included having team lock-ins, parties, sleepovers. Working together to create songs and plan fundraisers is another fun way to unite a group.

Another great team-building strategy that I have found works is having big and little sisters. It won't bring the *entire* team together necessarily, but it is a way to get people on the team to form bonds.

My high school team also sat down in a big circle before each game. Our chaplain would pray and we would go around the circle and offer thoughts and comments (in an organized way of course). These short talks are one of the things I fondly remember.