Year: 2016
College: Ezra Stiles
Hometown: Saline, Michigan
Major: Prospective Global Affairs or Modern Middle Eastern Studies
Meet Chrissy Houle, Yale’s first and de facto best baton twirler! You’ve probably seen her on the football field or basketball court wowing the crowd with her tricks! Considering the hours of practice she is putting in to prepare for this weekend’s Harvard Yale game, we were lucky to catch her for a quick chat about her experience at Yale!
HC: What got you started in baton twirling?
CH: I’ve been doing it since I was 5 years old. It was a location thing. The small town I grew up in in Michigan had a team there and every 4 and 5 year old little girl tries it for a bit and I really liked it. So I kept going and starting competing and getting much more involved in it.
HC: So was it ever a question that you’d keep twirling at Yale?
CH: Well, kind of. I was going to continue twirling no matter where I went to school… whether I’d be twirling for that school was a question. Yale hasn’t… well they potentially may have never had one. They definitely haven’t had one in the past several decades so it was more I was going to ask Yale and see if they let me and they did! So that was great!
HC: They were open to it?
CH: So the way I went about it was I went through the marching band. The way you do it at universities where they have established twirling positions is you contact the band director first. Which is what I did here. Found out very quickly that YPMB (Yale Precision Marching Band) is very much student run. And then I got to the Drum Major and also the director who is an actual adult and professor and they were all very gung-ho about it so that was great! Nice to hear.
HC: What’s the hardest part about baton twirling?
CH: It’s like any other sport. You have to train a lot for it in order to maintain good performance level. The hardest thing here is just having the time to train without a team or a coach to motivate or critique me. You can’t imagine how much you miss someone screaming at you until they’re not there any more!
HC: What does a typical practice look like for you?
CH: By the time I was in high school I was managing about 4-6 hours a day and then in the summer that’s when we start training for nationals it was closer to 8-12.
HC: What’s the hardest trick you do?
CH: Hardest trick I will do in competition is a one double. So you toss it up, spin once and then you do these things called illusions where you go upside down, twice and then in theory your supposed to catch it. Hardest thing I’ve done on the field since I’ve been here is a plain double illusion, so just take out the spin, which was very exciting! I was surprised I caught it. It’s much harder twirling on the field, I’m used to a gym. With the grass, rain, sometimes snow, wind…
HC: What has been your experience twirling for Yale sports?
CH: I’ve loved it a lot. I’ve always enjoyed performing more than competing. It’s a lot more fun and a lot less stressful. It’s a very different dynamic than what I experienced twirling for my high school football team because twirling was just such a part of the community. It wasn’t a big deal cause we were always there so I was surprised when I came here by everyone’s reaction. Everyone was so excited and seemed to care and like it so much. I wasn’t used to that.
HC: Are you doing anything different in preparation for this weekend than the past?
CH: Twirling-wise, no. Still trying to practice a same amount. The band however is doing a lot more. I’m also a production manager for the band, which means I’m one of the 3 people that writes the shows for the week so obviously there’s SO much going on right now!
HC: Other than twirling and the band do you anything else on campus?
CH: I try, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for anything else. I’m in Yale College Dems and I’m also in YIRA. I’m running the Arab league for the Model UN conference in January.
HC: What is something you would say to people watching you twirl, what would it be?
CH: When I drop, that’s really common. I know it seems like I’m messing up… but the metaphor I use is, how often in a basketball game does a player miss a shot? That’s the equivalent. So I know its really disappointing and everybody goes, “Awww” but…
HC: Anything Else?
CH: Everyone should go to the Harvard Yale game!