The next time sophomore Andrea Dent steps into Tiger Stadium, it won’t be just as a spectator.
Dent, an ROTC cadet, recently earned a spot on the LSU color guard and will be on the field for the Tigers’ home opener Sept. 10, when they take on Jacksonville State.
“It’ll be surreal,” Dent said. “To just be on the field experiencing Death Valley from a different perspective, not from a fan perspective, looking into the crowd will be amazing.”
With three years of experience as a Robinson Starlet at T.R. Robinson High School in Tampa, Florida under her belt, Dent decided to try out for the LSU color guard.
The political science major sent in a video submission and successful made the squad last year, but because of a conflict in her schedule, she was unable to continue. Before the round of auditions came about, Dent made sure it would work with school schedule.
This time Dent went her tryouts in person instead of a recorded video, which was a bit of a challenge for her.
“It was different because I was actually there in person,” Dent said. “You have think about all the options if you don’t make it, what’s going to happen and if you don’t make it how do you feel.”
Her solo routine didn’t go as well as she liked, saying everything that could go wrong in her solo went wrong. Dent still had one more round of auditions to go through, in need of words of encouragement, she turned to her older sister, a former cheerleader, for moral support.
“She basically told me…to get it together,” Dent said. “Do what I know I can do and leave it all on the floor. That was probably the best advice I could get. It definitely changed my state of mind of how I was going to finish out my audition.”
Those words of encouragement helped propel her to finish well and earn a spot for next year’s squad.
The audition was kept mostly a secret to her family members, including Dent’s other sister, who was also a part of her high school color guard. When she gave her loved ones the good news, Dent recalled them being “ecstatic” and “happy”.
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it or not,” Dent said. “I didn’t want to broadcast it the world… They were happy for me, because they knew the stress that I went through that morning.”
Being selected as one of the 20 or 30 girls for the color guard, was a “breath of fresh air” for Dent and will now give her parents another reason to travel about 680 miles from Tampa to Baton Rouge.
“My mom has already said that she’s going to have pick a big game,” Dent said. “She already knows she’s going to have to make a drive.”
