Dubliners may have seen some familiar smiling faces on their TV screens Saturday, Dec. 6 as the DHS Dandi-Lion Drill team danced alongside the CW33 float in the Dallas Christmas parade.
“We actually talked about this last year, “ said sponsor Emily Akard. “They were very excited about it because it was going to be televised. We’ve known about it since May.”
Since that time, the team got prepared.
“The Dallas Parade organization sent us choreography and the girls had to teach it to themselves,” said Akard. “We were instructed to be in straight lines and told there would be cameras on the side and cameras on the top so that we had to have our spacing perfect. So they worked very hard on that.”
Even with all that preparation, there were still some jitters about being televised. “I wanted to run away from the cameras on live TV but didn’t,” admitted Yareli Solis, who said she was excited to to see all the dancers and floats in real life.
Akard said everyone was excited when they checked in at 6:30 a.m. and got ready for the 2-mile route, joined by Dublin Intermediate principal Amanda Lisso and secondary principal Dr. Norma Villicana-Arreguin. They left the event at 11:30 a.m.
The parade left a lot of lasting memories for the dancers.
Evelyn Candelario said one of her
DANCE, favorite memories was “getting to high five the little kids when they were excited while we were walking by.”
She also treasured seeing Ms. Akard “cheer for us on the sidewalk.”
Akard said she wondered if/when they would end up on camera and got her answer. “My phone started blowing up with people sending video of seeing the girls on TV and I knew we made it,” said Akard who can be heard shouting for the drill team on her own cell phone video so high that her voice cracked.
The team traveled in the night before and also got to get a nice meal at a Mexican restaurant and went to the Galleria where they tried ice skating. “A couple of them hit the ice but no injuries,” said Akard, who reported they stopped holding the rails after a while.
This led to a favorite memory for dancer Makayla Facio. “I think that one of my favorite memories was when we were all going on the ice skate rink and me, Lali, and Joce were trying to not fall. Everytime I was about to fall, Joce would always yell in a dramatic way, ‘Makayla!’ like I was about to do something crazy,” said Facio. “Ice skating is not as easy as it seems, I fell once and Joce fell 5 times. I would do it again though. It was so much fun!”