Behind The Scenes with the Silverados

Behind+The+Scenes+with+the+Silverados

Renee Darling, Staff Writer

A part of Charger football games everybody looks forward to is the halftime performance by the iconic Silverado dance team. Each week we’re mesmerized by a pom-pom dance or kick line, but stretching, conditioning, and long practices that are spent going through choreography are just a few things that bring their routine together. In part two of this series, I’m diving down into the behind-the-scenes of the dance team, a program that puts just as much work into football games as the players.

The Silverados practice every day from around 2:45 to 4:30 or 5 during the first semester, beginning with stretching and strengthening, although they do more of this during the summer. They then move on to running through their performance with counts to perfect the details and embed the choreography into their brains, and after, add music. They learn the choreography early in the summer on a trip to TBARM, a camp in New Braunfels, where professional choreographers teach them two main football routines and a homecoming hip hop dance. The Silverado officers go over the dances with the dancers when school starts, practicing in small group activities to help the memorization and review process.

Kalissa Hicks-Crowe (11) said, “We split into groups when we dance so we can give each other feedback and hype each other up while dancing.”

After the review session, the dancers have tryouts based on their knowledge and must pass to perform in the halftime show each week. A few officers also choreograph short dances over the summer for the team to perform in the stands while the band plays their stand tunes.

The Silverado’s practices migrate from their usual dance room to the parking lot and run through their show a few times with the band the day before a game to do a full run of their performance with the music they’ll be dancing to.

“The band lot allows us to get an idea of the spacing for our entry, forms in the dances, and our exit,” Haley Lamm (10) explained. “Sometimes we adjust the tempo of the music too.”

When game day arrives, they go home and do a full face of makeup, low bun, and prepare their hats, skirts, boots, shirts, and stand items such as their cowbell and football buddy sign. Each Silverado picks one or two football player buddies, to whom they give gifts and make signs for to wave in the stands and cheer them on. The gifts usually consist of snacks or things the football player(s) would like before the game.

Not only do the Silverados excite the crowd and support the football team, but they look elegant and entertaining while doing it, so continue supporting your Silverado dance team!