Q with Charlotte Baker – Golden Girl

The Tiger Marching Band and the LSU Golden Girls go hand-in-hand, providing rousing performances for a legion of fans. As they march down Victory Hill on Saturday afternoons and keep fans entertained and enthralled at halftime, spectators find themselves cheering, dancing and relishing in the shimmering verve of these outstanding performers. Kinesiology senior Charlotte Baker provides 225 with some insight into what it’s like to perform on Saturday nights in Death Valley.

We practice with the band Tuesday through Saturday, and then we have our own practice separately from the band as well most nights of the week and Saturday also. During the week of a home game, we practice an hour and a half with the band and then anywhere form an hour to an hour and a half on our own. 


In the past years we haven’t really had any extreme temperatures. We’ve danced in the rain, which isn’t ideal, but we’ll do it. And if you get extremely, extremely cold, we would be able to stay in the uniform until halftime, and then after we perform we would change into jazz pants and a jacket to get some layers.

We pretty much take our cues from the drum major. There’s always a man with a headset on who is telling the drum major that they just called a [certain play]. Then the drum major plays the cheer. We always have someone communicating to him exactly what it is.

By that time, we can tell from the first couple of notes of the song what they’re about to play. They’ll call it out, too, especially if it’s just a fun song.

At the beginning of the fourth quarter every game, we each eat a Laffy Taffy for good luck. I don’t think many people know that. I’m not sure exactly how that first started, but it’s been a long-time thing.

We usually read the jokes [on the wrappers], and they’ve gotten less and less funny.