Every year, dozens of girls try out for a chance to join Golden Girls, a team that consistently places during competitions, including at HTE Dance in Fort Worth this month. Golden Girls Photo For more than 25 years, the Brownsboro High School Golden Girls has brought pride and honor to its community. But the drill team isn’t nearly as supported as the district’s other programs, a parent and booster club member told The Statesman.

“They’re kind of forgotten,” Melissa Kidd said. “The community has never really rallied behind them. These girls work so hard, but anytime they do anything, usually the only people who show up are the parents.”

Every year, dozens of girls try out for a chance to join Golden Girls, a team that consistently places during competitions, including at HTE Dance in Fort Worth this month.

“They get lots of honors and awards every year,” Kidd said. “We went to two contests, in February and March, and they got everything they went out for. They’re incredible. You’d think there would be more support for these girls.”

The student-athletes begin their “dance year” in summer camps, which are followed by daily practices in July. During football season, they arrive on campus at 7 a.m. and, after class, practice until 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday.

Golden Girls performs during football games. When the season ends, they learn new officer, team, and solo routines to prepare for contest season.

“Once they have wrapped up contest season, it is time for tryouts for the next year’s team,” Kidd said. “While tryouts are on all their minds, they are preparing for the Spring show in May. The date has not been set, but everyone is invited to see these girls show off all they have worked on throughout the year.”

This year’s week-long tryouts end on Friday, when outside judges will determine who makes the team.

“We don’t have a set number in drill team,” Kidd said. “You make it or you don’t. Each girl has to try out every year. If you have been in it three years already, then you don’t have to try out. But we don’t have many of those girls.”

That might soon change.

“Not that many freshmen make it, because they don’t have the dance history behind them. That has gotten better, because (Director) Debbie Morton teaches a dance class at the junior high. So they’re getting more experience.”

This season’s are Offi- cers Capt. Emily Nix, Lts. Haley Hargrave and Amber Debenport, Carrie Miller, Selina Wallace, Brittany Weaver, Jennifer Dawsome, Jamie Lehman, Erika Williams, Emily Bartmess, Elizabeth Frances, Danielle Blakely, Lindsey Lauer, Bailey Barkley, Caitlin McCarter, and Brittney Willard. Students with disciplinary issues are not allowed to participate.

“Being a Golden Girl is a really big honor to me because I not only get to represent my school in a positive way, but I also have teammates and sisters that I won’t ever lose,” Frances, a sophomore, said. “Being a Golden Girl has taught me a lot of responsibility, and I appreciate it.”

Frances and the other team members must raise money throughout the year to finance trips and to pay for equipment and uniforms. Kidd said fund-raising efforts aren’t supported by the district, either.

“We pay for everything. It cost me last year $900 for my daughter. We have to pay for their uniforms, practice clothes, tights and everything. The contests we go to, the booster club pays for the transportation and hotel rooms. We get very little funding.”

The Gold Rush car show is the program’s largest fundraiser. Golden Girls also hosts spaghetti dinners, chili cook-offs, raffles, movie nights, bake sales, and car washes to help offset expenses

“Currently, the booster club is working on details of sponsoring a scholarship for the senior team members,” Kidd said. “There will be a bake sale and auction during intermission of the Spring show in May.

“This has been a great way for the community to support the girls, either by watching them perform, donating a baked good or, of course, purchasing one in the auction.”

The fundraisers are more than supplemental revenue streams. The district appears content to let Golden Girls rise or fall on its own, Kidd said.

“Apparently, this has been an ongoing battle for quite some time,” she said. “We do not get any support from the administration. The girls have never been allowed to go on a trip like the band does every year. One time when they went to New York, they could not use the name “Golden Girls” or that of the school district.

“The answer we were given is that it’s too expensive. We get shut down. I don’t know what the problem is.”

Brownsboro High Principal Kenneth Wooten said the Golden Girls budget is $14,400. And Superintendent Elton Caldwell said he believes Golden Girls receives enough money to do its work.

“I think the financial support is about like it is at other schools around,” he said. “I wouldn’t swear on that, but that would be my best guess.”

Until this year, Kidd said, members of Golden Girls were forced to practice in areas inadequate for student athletes.

“They had to practice in the halls. They had nothing at all. But they have been given the old intermediate school gym, directly behind the high school.”

And while the team is “excited” to have the space, the gym has no air conditioning, Kidd said. They also have no electricity in their locker rooms, and booster club members had to paint the lockers “so they’d be presentable.”

“These girls are physically exhausted by the end of two-a-days. They work really, really hard. A lot of work goes into a show.”

Wallace, a senior, agreed.

“Being a Golden Girl means working extremely hard to even accomplish a little and being a part of a team that is pretty much a family,” she said. “Everyone looks up to the Golden Girls. Being a Golden Girl is like being queen of the world; it just makes your life outstandingly awesome.”

Debenport, also a senior, said she could compare being part of the team to anything else.

“I have a second family. No matter how awful my day may be, practice can always cheer me up because I love my team so much. Not only that, but I get to represent my school and also get to do what I love. There is no feeling like when you walk onto that football field and hear your school’s fight song.”

The high school’s athletic facilities and instruction space for student-athletes are inadequate and outdated. But the campus is one of three in the district officials are considering renovating or rebuilding if a tax election in November is successful.